Mexico, Chiapas 73%

Located on the Pacific coast of southern Mexico, the region that is now the Mexican state of Chiapas has long played a prominent role in the history of chocolate. About 4,000 years ago, its residents invented a way to use not only the cacao tree’s sweet pulp but also its seeds – the cacao beans. Their innovation was to ferment and roast the beans, unlocking the chocolate flavor as we know it today.

Chiapas was the prime growing region for cacao through the 17th century, but due to over-farming, lost prominence to South America and eventually West Africa. With demand for high-quality cocoa on the rise, however, the region is making a comeback. And while its famed ancient cacao trees no longer survive in pure form, their complex flavor profiles linger in their hybridized descendants, including the ones whose beans are in this bar.

Indeed, this hybrid bean offers both the dynamic flavors of criollo cacao and the more “classic” chocolate base of Amazon cacao, making for an approachable introduction to single-origin chocolate. Dried purple fruit notes open, with biscuit-like flavors quickly following until impressions of coffee or chicory take over at the finish.