Bean to Bar Chocolate Maker Location: Watertown, MA
Chocolate Maker Name: Sotto Chocolate
Website: http://www.sottochocolate.com
Date Established: February 2020
Ingredients Used: 3 – Cacao beans, Organic cane sugar, Organic cocoa butter
Current Chocolate Production Output: About 300 bars/month
Allergen Information: Possible traces of dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, and wheat
Click here to watch the chocolate tasting recording with Amy from Sotto Chocolate.
Amy Vachon is the sole maker behind Sotto Chocolate, working out of a tiny chocolatory lovingly built onto her home by her husband, Marc. Before chocolate, Amy’s career was in pharmacy—she earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree. But over the past decade, her lifelong love of chocolate grew from enthusiast to student to maker, inspiring her to retire from pharmacy in 2024 and dedicate herself fully to chocolate.
She has trained with Ecole Chocolat, Map Chocolate’s The Next Batch School, the International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting, and at Crayfish Bay Organic Cacao Farm in Grenada.
Sotto Chocolate is a true nano-batch craft chocolate company. Amy sources cacao one bag at a time, roasts it in 2.5-lb batches, then cracks, winnows, grinds, and conches it for nearly 48 hours with sugar and a touch of cocoa butter before hand-tempering it into bars. Every step is hands-on, small-scale, and dedicated to coaxing out the bean’s natural character.
The name Sotto comes from the Italian word for “under.” In music, sotto voce means “in an undertone”—something subtle, unfolding beneath the melody. Chocolate, too, offers layers to discover: bold flavors upfront, others developing in the background, and notes that linger long after the bite. Amy chose Sotto to weave together her love of chocolate with her other passion, music. An amateur violinist, she performs with a local symphony and chamber groups, and her violin often appears alongside her chocolate bars as Sotto’s “spokesmodel.” The brand’s logo—a stylized violin bridge—ties it all together.
For Amy, creating Sotto Chocolate is a dream come true. The blend of unique flavor profiles, the science of conching and tempering, the beauty of sustainable farming, and the sheer joy of sharing delicious chocolate keep her passion alive every day.
And how did this journey begin? With a Cococlectic subscription years ago. Receiving those monthly boxes and discovering how extraordinary real craft chocolate could taste planted the seed that grew into Sotto. That makes it a full-circle moment to feature Sotto Chocolate in this month’s Cococlectic box.
