We're excited and proud to announce that we won seventeen 2022 Academy of Chocolate Awards - more than any other maker in North America! Our winners include four golds: Special Reserve 100% Cacao Special Reserve, Putnam Rye Whiskey Special Reserve, Lawley's Rum Special Reserve, Las Palomas Coffee For the complete list of winners check out our Awards Page. All of these bars are available in our online store and are currently in stock, so you can try all of the...

You've probably seen the term Fair Trade a lot on product packaging. When you see that label you probably assume that people all along the supply chain, from farmers on up, are receiving a higher price for their product than they would otherwise. But, that's not always the case. For example, with cacao it's possible that farmers who pay money for a Fair Trade certification could get paid LESS than the already-too-low commodity price for cacao. Does this mean Fair...

It's true - single origin cocoa butter really IS awesome. We know this because we taste it. A lot. If you don't agree with us about cocoa butter's awesomeness you've probably never tasted the right kind. And the reason you've probably never tasted the right kind is because it's very, very, very hard to find. Why is it so hard to find? Well, because it's very, very, very hard to make. But we make it because adding single origin cocoa...

The Washington Post recently published an excellent article, “Cocoa’s Child Laborers,” detailing the issues with child labor and unsafe working conditions in the global cacao supply chain. The article explains how, for nearly twenty years, the large industrial chocolate companies have missed goals to eradicate child labor from cacao production. These goals were set collaboratively involving many major industrial chocolate companies, members of the U.S. congress and representatives from foreign governments. Based on the numbers provided in the article it...

We're a small business, and we actively search out and support other small businesses in our community. We'd like to share why the concept of small business is so important to us. First, we should define what a small business is. The US Small Business Association defines it as an independent business that has less than 500 employees. While that may seem like a lot, the average small business size is 22.2 employees per company. According to the SBA’s 2020...

We're proud to announce our Boyaca bar is our fifth consecutive Good Food Award Winner! The Good Food Awards are unique in that all submissions must meet strict criteria for social and environmental responsibility. There are only three regional winners in each category, making these awards even more special. Try our Boyaca bar for yourself today, and try our four previous winners with our Good Food Award Winners collection!

Happy Spring! We are outside prepping the gardens for our Spring plantings, and it feels so good to dig in the dirt and imagine all of the vegetables and herbs we’ll have soon have. A family favorite to grow is fresh mint- luckily for us it is such a hearty plant we are never in short supply for our teas, salads and treats! This inspired us for this week’s chocolate baking experiment, and the resulting double chocolate mint brownies were...

We're proud to share that our 2021 Sofi award winners are our El Carmen 77% bar, Classic Milk bar and our El Carmen Hot Cocoa! The sofi awards recognize the best specialty foods from around the globe, and were dubbed the "Oscars of the food world" by Bloomberg. This year we won awards in three different categories: Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate and Coffee & Hot Cocoa. We're the only chocolate maker to win an award in each category, and the...

It's that time of year again! Time for all the ghosts at our 200 year old farm to once again haunt our historic barn. Considering they wait all year for this it's understandable they go all out for the occasion. In addition to our ghosts we think neighboring specters show up as well. 💀💀💀 Although our spooky barn isn't open to the public please join Monica and me for a video tour of this year's spookiness. Not only will it...

Fall is finally here, and apples and pumpkins are everywhere!   We're happy to report that our pumpkin patch is a tremendous success. This is the first year we grew pumpkins, and we ended up with dozens of large, healthy ones. You'll notice that some of the pumpkins are slightly different colors, and that's because we planted several varieties, including Jack Be Littles, Big Maxes, Owl's Eyes, Red Warty Things and Spartans. Who knew there were so many different types...