3 Cacao Bar Bundle: Finca San Antonio y Idealista, Nicaragua 70%

More for less! Individual cacao bars are $13+ each, but this three bar bundle offers more magic ✨ while saving on both bar and shipping costs. 

Notes: Savory-sweet: roasted pineapple, raisin, brownie, sweet tobacco, warm spice, smoke, umami. 

Country of Origin: Nicaragua
Region: El Socorro Fila Grande, El Tuma, Nicaragua · 800 to 900 meters
Farm: Finca San Antonio y Idealista
Producers: Noe Antonio Rizo Meléndez and Esmeralda Castillo Montenegro

The Farm Story: Finca San Antonio

Noe and Esmeralda married young in Granadilla, Nicaragua, when he was 22 and she was 20. Two years later, ADDAC, a Nicaraguan NGO that supports organic farming, offered them 15 manzanas of land (about 26 acres) in the community of El Socorro Fila Grande, sold on credit and payable over ten years.

The land was fallow when they arrived. They planted coffee, and strategically placed cacao and other fruit trees throughout it for shade. They named the farm San Antonio. Years later, that early choice to plant cacao gave them somewhere to turn when coffee stopped working for them.

For fifteen years the farm was certified organic and Fair Trade through a local cooperative, and their coffee went to a Canadian buyer they were glad to know. During that time they paid off their land in five years, half the time allowed. Many others who received land through the same program were still paying after twelve.

One season, the cooperative withheld the certification premium Noe and Esmeralda were owed. They felt deceived. They left the program, shifted their focus from coffee to cacao, and began selling to whoever offered the best price on local markets.

Today San Antonio has seven manzanas of cacao, a mix of Forastero and Criollo, and four of coffee, down from ten. Tahiti limes, plantains, bananas, and oranges grow among them.

Through their neighbors at Finca Idealista and Gold Mountain Coffee Growers, they recently began selling to partners in the US at better prices than they’ve had access to before. The first round went well, and the plan is to grow that volume over the coming years. This particular cycle, Finca San Antonio's small harvest was blended into Finca Idealista's even smaller harvest, at a ratio of 4:1 respectively.

“We work the best we can with little access to credit, and with labor shortages because people are emigrating or leaving to work in the mines. We rely on our family’s own effort to get the farm producing at its full potential despite these limits.”
 - Don Noe

Ingredients:
70% farm traceable cacao, 30% organic regenerative cane sugar
8g sugar per 28g serving (half bar)

A Note on Allergens and Additives:
We stone grind our traceable cacao in machines also making delicious things from tree nuts. Apart from that, we do not use emulsifiers like lecithins, or other additives like vanilla.

When we add sugar, it is intentional. We only use traceable, raw, organically and regeneratively grown cane sugar. We add sugar for the purpose of attenuating the innate power of cacao to meet our limited palates, increasing our receptivity to the delight in every morsel.

A Note on Shipping:

Shipping is not a profit center for us, and our goal is to pass along the lowest possible rate. That being said, shipping just one bar has outsized costs. We recommend our 3-bar or 6-bar boxes for the best value on shipping.