Solkiki – Maranon, Peru 68% Dark

Description

TASTING NOTES

Sweet berries and blossom honey open the bar. Tropical fruits build and then give way to liquorice that lengthens into a slightly menthol finish.

ABOUT THE MAKER

Iris and Bob began experimenting with chocolate in 2008, after feeling distinctly underwhelmed by their search for vegan white chocolate. Now they’ve developed a wide range of white, milk, and dark bars, all of them vegan, and all of them created out of their beautiful off-the-grid 1650s cottage in Dorset, UK.

THE BEANS

In the early twentieth century, the Puro Nacional, a variety of exceptional Ecuadorian cocoa bean, was declared to be extinct after disease had ravaged the area. But in 2007, two Americans who were in the area supplying equipment to local mining companies in the Marañon Valley, Peru, stumbled upon a strange cocoa tree. They sent the fruit off for DNA analysis, which confirmed that the new beans were pure strains of the old Puro Nacional. This exceptionally rare cocoa bean is now cultivated in the valley and imbues each chocolate bar with beautiful elegance and complexity.