Crafting Markets

🍫 One of the most overlooked skills in chocolate making is sourcing intuition.

Not the ability to read a flavour wheel.
Not the ability to repeat tasting notes.
The ability to understand what you are looking for in a cocoa bean.

That intuition isn't built overnight. It comes from tasting broadly, comparing relentlessly, making chocolate from different origins, experimenting with roast profiles, and paying attention to your own reactions.

🤔 Why do you prefer one bean over another?
🌱 Why does one origin keep finding its way back into your production?
👃 Why do certain flavour profiles excite you while others leave you cold?

The answers to those questions often tell you more than any score sheet.

The more you train your palate, the more clearly you begin to recognize the flavours, textures, and characteristics that align with your vision as a maker.

Because great sourcing isn't just about finding good cacao.

✨ It's about finding the cacao that helps you make the chocolate you want to make.

West Sumba is dry, rugged, and historically isolated. 🌴

Annual rainfall is low, temperatures are harsh, and much of the island has faced severe deforestation over the last centuries. It’s not the kind of place most people would immediately imagine producing internationally awarded cacao.

And maybe that’s exactly why it matters.

What makes Gaura Estate interesting is not just the flavour profile — although the bittersweet grapefruit, dried apricot, toasted bread, and walnut notes are genuinely distinctive. It’s the fact that this flavour emerged through persistence, observation, and long-term work in a place many considered unsuitable for quality cacao.

It’s also part of a bigger shift happening in Indonesia. For years, Indonesian cacao was often reduced to “bulk cocoa” conversations. But origins like West Sumba are proving just how much complexity, terroir, and craftsmanship exists across the archipelago. 🍫

FineCacao

Have we treated fermentation as the unquestioned path to quality? 🍫

Cacao lavado invites a different conversation.

In southern Mexico, cacao has traditionally been washed and sun-dried without fermentation — a process deeply tied to centuries of cacao beverages, indigenous foodways, and a very different understanding of what chocolate was meant to be. 🌿

And interestingly, modern research is beginning to reveal something else:

Unfermented cacao may retain dramatically higher levels of flavanols, antioxidants, and epicatechin compared to fermented cacao from the same origin. 🧪

This does not make lavado “better” than fermented cacao.

But it does challenge the idea that transformation is the only measure of value in cacao.

For makers, this opens fascinating questions around:

— flavor philosophy
— historical authenticity
— ceremonial cacao
— processing precision
— and the relationship between preservation and quality

Let’s explore why cacao lavado matters — historically, scientifically, and sensorially.

A big thank you to our partners who are helping revive and research this deeply rooted Mexican cacao tradition. 🇲🇽

For years, craft chocolate tried to prove that better chocolate existed.

What struck us recently at is that the conversation is evolving.
The real question is no longer “can bean-to-bar survive?”
It’s becoming: “What kind of ecosystem are we building around cocoa and craft chocolate?”

And honestly, this changes everything.

Craft chocolate makers today are not only refining roast curves or sourcing better beans.
They’re becoming:
— educators
— connectors
— translators between origin and consumers
— curators of the movement
— builders of trust

We're seeing the movement grows when people stop acting like isolated brands and start acting like participants in a shared system.

That means:
🍫 sharing knowledge openly
🌱 making origin visible beyond marketing
🧠 teaching consumers how to taste and understand
🤝 collaborating across roles (makers, producers, sourcers, retailers, educators)
📍creating experiences, not only products

There’s also a deeper shift happening: craft chocolate is slowly moving toward something closer to wine, coffee, gastronomy and cultural craftsmanship.

Which means the opportunity is bigger than shelves.

The makers making pushing for change might not be the loudest or biggest ones.

They’ll be the ones able to:
— create meaningful relationships
— make complexity understandable
— connect origin to emotion
— and help consumers feel part of something real

Excited to be part of this movement and curious to hear what others are seeing from where they stand.

What shifts are you noticing?
What do you think this community needs most right now?

We’ll be at Showcolat, Bordeaux — May 1–3 come find us at the stand!

We’ll have chocolates from different origins to taste, and we’re always happy to talk through:
flavour development, sourcing challenges and opportunities, anything you want to know.

On May 1st, we’re also hosting a tasting: Asian cacao, crafted by our partner chocolate makers
🗓 14:30 – 15:30
📍 Forastero Room

We’ll taste chocolates made from cacao grown across Southeast Asia, and look at how: Origin, fermentation, makers choices.

Same cacao → different decisions → different outcomes.

If you’ve ever wanted a clearer link between process and flavour, this session will give you that.

Festivals like are wonderful opportunities to spot trends, taste side by side, exchange feedback, and the most special aspect: connect with fellow makers and peers from the craft world!

If you’re coming, make the most of it.
And come say hello!

Here's to a wonderful first edition of Showcolat!