We always wondered how much a culture influences the palate. We found our answer the first time we did a side-by-side tasting with our Dandelion Chocolate Japan team. With the same beans, same machines, same process, same company, and same philosophy, we’ve found that the chocolate our partners make in Japan can be wildly different from our American bars. Chocolate makers tend to calibrate roast profiles to the palates of local consumers, and we’ve found that the Japanese team tends to enjoy more fermented, roasted, and certain bitter flavors more often than we do in San Francisco. We encourage you to taste these bars side by side to see the differences for yourself.

We launched Dandelion Chocolate Japan in collaboration with Seiji Horibuchi in 2016. Seiji Horibuchi frequented our San Francisco café and we developed an immediate rapport over our shared love of chocolate. Seiji has an eye for detail, endless energy, and we loved our conversations together. He proposed taking Dandelion Chocolate international by building a new factory in Kuramae, old Tokyo — an area known for tucked-away artisan workshops and a craft culture. We couldn’t pass up the offer to share our love of chocolate with more of the world.

The beans in this bar come from Cahabon in the Alta Verapaz region of Guatemala, and are nearly double the size of a typical cacao bean. For Akari’s first bar profile, she strives to highlight nutty aromas.