
Maker
ChocolarderMike Longman, a former pastry chef, founded Chocolarder in Cornwall, UK in 2012. The bars are made in small batches with a focus on organic ingredients and single origin cacao. Chocolarder has earned multiple awards for their chocolate, making them a respected name in British craft chocolate. A good choice for shoppers interested in UK-made bean-to-bar chocolate or looking for a distinctive gift with clear provenance.


Cacao Region
Bahia, BrazilBahia is one of the largest states of Brazil, located in the east, along the Atlantic coast. Once a monarchial stronghold dominated by slave-centric agriculture and ranching, Bahia is now a domestic manufacturing center and the focal point of Brazil’s re-entry into the fine cacao market. The region was once the largest cacao producer in the country, so reputed that a portion of southern Bahia was nicknamed “Cacao Coast.” Unfortunately, bioterrorism in the 1980’s devastated the country’s crop over the course of just a decade. In the early 2010’s, a number of family farms took it upon themselves to revitalize the local fine flavor cacao industry, which continues to grow annually.
Cacao Estate
Fazenda Sempre FirmeBrazil’s southern state of Bahia is known within the country as the cacao capitol, and for good reason— more than half the country’s cacao is grown in Bahia alone. This is part of the reason why, in April 2009, chocolate maker Bertil Akesson purchased Bahia’s historic Fazenda Sempre Firme. The 120-hectare cocoa plantation is right in the middle of the Mata Atlantica, one of the rain forests with the highest biodiversity on earth. On the farm, the team is growing the traditional forastero cocoa variety called parasinho, which was thought of as the glory of Bahia in the early 1900’s.
