In 1996, we noticed that the major barrier to increase the quality of chocolate was: The Farmer. Few had ever eaten a chocolate bar and had no idea what was becoming of the cocoa beans they had sold to the local middle man. Flavor development in chocolate is in the hands of two partners who barely know each other.

The farmer is responsible for fermenting and drying the cocoa beans. Without a good fermentation, one cannot create a chocolate “of high octane” — meaning 70% and above.

In 1996, few farmers were actually fermenting their cocoa beans properly. Most cocoa beans were being sold by weight; as long as there was “some fermentation” it was acceptable for the middle man. The roasting process is done by companies that have lack the knowledge of how the beans are fermented, where they come from, how they were dried, and the method of fermentations.

To make good chocolate, we deemed it was essential to get the farmers to understand how important fermentation was. We taught them the basics of fermentation and introduced them to the end product — the chocolate bar made with their cocoa beans.

The tipping point for the farmers' involvement was when we gave a tool to analyze how well they had fermented their beans. Hence, we started distributing “Guillotine". This is a simple instrument that helped them cut 100 cocoa beans at once that were taken at random, and then evaluate the number of cocoa beans fermented, partially fermented, and defective. From that day forward, we saw a dramatic increase in the level of fermentation, and it was just a matter of adjusting the roasting to the latest batches of well fermented cocoa beans.

This is why we will give you the percentage of fermented cocoa beans in our harvest. The higher the fermentation, the less bitterness, given that one is working with fine cocoa (of course). By involving the farmer in the production of chocolate and taking pride in the outcome of their work, we have managed to make chocolate bars above 70% Cocoa Beans (without diluting the cocoa mass with extra cocoa butter). Above 70%, if one’s cocoa bean is not fermented well, the sugar (sugar makes up the remaining 30%) cannot hide the bitterness of badly fermented cocoa beans.

We are proud to offer a 100% bar to show the quality of our cocoa beans and our roasting process. Nowhere to hide from your palate. When you are not sure of the quality of a chocolate, I always recommend you to ask whether the manufacturer is making chocolate bars above 70% and request a sample tasting. This will allow you to really assess whether this company controls all aspects of flavor development, and indeed is working directly with farmers.

We collect cocoa beans from our farmers in Ecuador 4 times a year:

The cocoa pod on the right is mature; the one on the left is not .

• 1st Harvest ("H3"): at the beginning of the harvest season in early March.
• 2nd Harvest ("H5"): close to the end of the season by the end of May, as we work with only mature cocoa pods.

• 3rd Harvest ("H8"): occurs from July through September. We wait for the most important harvest. The less rainy season where the trees have more flowers, hence more flowers are pollinated and each tree yields more cocoa pods. The 3rd harvest happens one month after the season starts. This gives the cocoa pods time to mature. We only harvest select mature pods, unlike big commercial operations.
• 4th Harvest ("H10"): This is our biggest harvest at the end of the season. We collect what we can to last us until next year. The rain and soil have a tremendous impact on the size of each bean and the percentage of cocoa oil (cocoa butter). Too much rain would make it difficult to sun dry the cocoa beans, thus diminishing the acidity in the beans (sometimes elegantly called “fruity”).

2009 Harvest Schedule

Note the green color, and deep furrows — the specific phenotype signs of Arriba. Any red or yellow color on the outer surface would indicate a hybrid or something not 100% Arriba Nacional.

We describe our harvest with the percentage of fermentation, its terroir, and the type of beans. It takes 2–3 weeks to gather enough bags to start our batch roasting process. We need to operate our conch at a minimum of 75% capacity to get the optimal results.