Sale price Price $15 Regular price

Maya Mountain

Belize

70 2017

Dandelion Chocolate Japan

Maya Mountain Cacao works with indigenous Maya smallholder farmers in southern Belize. Dandelion Japan Chocolate Maker Ebi likes the fruity flavor notes expressed in these beans year after year. In this bar we taste cheesecake, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and roasted peanuts.

We always wondered how much a culture influences the palate, and found our answer the first time we did a side-by-side tasting with our Dandelion Chocolate Japan team. Using the same beans, same machines, same processes, and same philosophy, our partners in Japan craft chocolate that can be wildly different from our San Francisco-made bars. This is because chocolate makers tend to calibrate roast profiles to the palates of local consumers, and our Japanese team tends to enjoy more herbaceous, fermented, roasted, and certain bitter flavors than we do in S.F., where we often lean toward creamy, chocolatey, and nutty notes. When available, we encourage you to taste S.F. and Tokyo bars of the same origin together, to experience the differences for yourself.

Ingredients & Allergens
All of our single-origin chocolate is made with just cocoa beans and sugar; no added cocoa butter, lecithin, or vanilla. Our chocolate is free of soy, dairy, eggs, and gluten, and it is made in a factory that does not process nuts.
Weight
NET WEIGHT

2 oz (56 g)
Learn More
Learn more about our cocoa beans and sugar - the region, the farms, and the producers.
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Gluten
Free

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Nut Free

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Vegan

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Direct
Sourced

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Two
Ingredients

+

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About Maya Mountain, Belize

Maya Mountain Cacao (MMC) is a social enterprise established in order to connect small-scale cacao growers in Belize with the international specialty-cocoa market. Located in Toledo, the least-developed region of Belize, MMC was the first company in the country to buy wet (unfermented) beans from farmers, and to emphasize the importance of quality in both the raw beans, and throughout fermentation and drying.

For their centralized fermentary, MMC purchases from family farms in southern Belize, committing to a consistent price throughout the season. MMC currently buys from over 400 farmers, a majority of whom have been suppliers for more than two years. We have been sourcing beans from MMC since 2013, and while we have witnessed their growth and success, we have also seen obstacles they face. 2017 was a particularly challenging year for MMC, as they experienced competition from seven other buyers in an area that yields an average of fewer than 150 tonnes of cacao per year. Dandelion Chocolate invested in MMC directly to help them with the capital they needed to build their new post-harvest center, which allowed them to expand capacity and improve quality.

ABOUT DANDELION CHOCOLATE JAPAN

We launched Dandelion Chocolate Japan in collaboration with Seiji Horibuchi in 2016. Seiji 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.

For more about Dandelion Chocolate Japan, we invite you to visit our blog.

David foils chocolate bars at the 16th Street Factory

Mari prepares a profile in Kuramae, Tokyo