The Negroni Bar with 70% Hacienda Palo Santo - Cerecita - Ecuador Dark Chocolate with Negroni soaked nibs and orange peel.

2021 Harvest -

Single Estate - Bean to bar

Cacao provenance: Hacienda Palo Santo | Cerecita, Ecuador

This is a crazy idea that turned magical after a long, laborious but very fruitful process. If you like the famed Negroni drink, this is a chocolatey cousin. 

First the nibs were soaked for 2 weeks in a Negroni drink. The nibs were then dehydrated to extract most of the alcohol and moisture out of them. (I left them a bit boozy to experience the Negroni flavors). When dehydrating, the nibs caramelized with the sugars from the liquors beautifully. After tempering the dark chocolate, I molded the bars and then added the dehydrated nibs and freshly grated orange peel. Once the bars where finished hardening, I immediately placed them in our packaging pouches to start the lovely marriage of the chocolate and the Negroni. This type of fine chocolate gets deeper and better with age. 

Our tasting Notes: 

Aromas: Orange marmalade, stewed berries, gin and cloves. This is the best aroma in a bar of chocolate in the world. Fight me!

Flavors: The pleasantly bitter, herbal, distinctive Negroni taste and
orange peel mixes splendidly with the dried berries and complex, fudge flavors from the chocolate. 

Ingredients:
Inclusions: Nacional Cacao nibs soaked in a Negroni drink (equal parts of Campari, Gin and Sweet Vermouth) and freshly grated orange peel.
Chocolate: Nacional Cacao beans, cane sugar and cacao butter.
Contains traces of alcohol. Infused nibs have been mostly dehydrated.

About the main Ingredient, the cacao!

Hacienda Palo Santo is a cacao farm located on the Cerecita Valley near the Ecuadorian coast, one hour away from Guayaquil.

Palo Santo is owned and daily managed by a family of agronomists who have been involved in the cacao production over three generations, developing innovative production techniques to protect resources and increase productivity while working on rigorous post-harvest controls with the needed infrastructure to produce the highest quality and homogenous cacao beans and pulp.

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