Cocoa trees are planted under the shade of larger “mother trees”, creating wooded areas that provide habitat for tropical birds and wild animals.
About 3 to 5 years after planting, cacao trees start to produce the fruits whose seeds can be turned into delicious chocolate.
Each cacao pod is harvested by hand, cutting it from the tree with a special cutter at the end of a long stick to reach the highest pods.
Each cocoa pod is skillfully opened with a machete and the almond-sized beans are pulled out. The beans are covered with a sweet white pulp.
Farmers have to meet stringent quality standards and are paid a premium for their beans. The farmer’s name and location of their cocoa trees are registered and traced back for quality assurance.
The fresh beans are fermented for about a week. This is a natural process where sugar from the pulp is consumed and the beans develop the deep chocolate flavor we love so much.
The beans are dried out in raised beds and the beans have to be moved continuously with wooden rakes for a week or two, to ensure that each bean is dried evenly.
After drying, the quality of the beans is verified by slicing samples of beans in half and inspecting their insides. Only the finest beans gets packaged.
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