The Fruit

So this what it’s all about. This is where your chocolate bar begins. It’s a fruit with a thick, almost pumpkin like exterior and a core of flesh covered seeds which, after harvesting, fermentation, drying, shipping, roasting, grinding down and mixing with cacao butter and milk and/or sugar and other fancy processing, it becomes the chocolate bar you know and love.  

Guatemala, with its range of climates, is home to a wide variety of high quality cacao, usually with a loveable nutty flavour, chocolate from this region is one sought after by craft chocolate makers. Some of the plantations we’ve visited were planted 200 years ago, passed down through Mayan generations, today these heirlooms plantations are a big interest to those, like Zotter, who are seeking fine cacao flavours.