Also from the Same Region
Maker
Fruition ChocolateFruition Chocolate was created in 2011 by Bryan Graham located in Shokan, NY. Graham, was always interested in pastry as a young boy and has worked his way as a pastry chef. Over the years, Fruition is keen on exceptional attention to detail from the calibration of ingredients, packaging, and appearance of the bar (mold, snap, color) make them one of our top bean to bar craft chocolate makers in the world. Fruition has won many awards for their bars over the years, including ‘Best in Competition” Fruition was one of the first bean to bar makers to experiment with new concepts such as bourbon-barrel aging and creating bars with just two ingredients.


Cacao Region
Duarte, Dominican RepublicDuarte is a northern province of the Dominican Republic, named after Juan Pablo Duarte, the founder of the country. The province is located in the eastern portion of the Cibao Valley, and finds its economic base in both commercial industry & processing, and agriculture. Duarte grows over two-thirds of the Dominican Republic’s exported cacao, as well as ~60% of the rice consumed within the country; other crops include coffee, tobacco, and bananas.
Cacao Strain
NacionalNacional is one of those ten evolutionarily unique types identified in 2008, using samples collected throughout the Americas over the previous century. Samples proven to be of the nacional cluster were taken from Ecuador and northern Peru, where it’s considered one of the traditional cacao cultivars; it was domesticated by indigenous Ecuadorians over 5000 years ago, reaching far beyond its small native growing region. Many years ago, however, the cultivar neared extinction as more productive clones replaced the region’s native trees. Nacional is known to be fruity & floral, with some astringency and almost no bitterness.