Story

The beans for this bar come from Freddy Salazar’s estate in Northern Ecuador near the coast. This chocolate is also a huge technological milestone for Dandelion, as it’s the first bar they’ve made using the ball mill and a rotary conch at their new 16th Street Factory that opened in April, 2019.

Dandelion's team has spent time at the farm with its manager, Freddy Salazar. It was able to see how much attention Freddy and his team put into every step of the process, including pruning trees, managing disease in the field, efficient harvesting practices, and clean loading of the fermentation boxes to ensure a clean facility. Freddy has built one of the most sophisticated processes ever seen, and it shows through in the flavor of his beans.

Hello Chocolate's team is excited about the bar the maker is producing, and the delicious roast profile that Dandelion has developed. We taste flavors of chocolate buttercream frosting and banana.

Freddy Salazar, the owner of Costa Esmeraldas, produces unique cocoa that we make into one of our best-selling bars. Located in the Esmeraldas Province of Ecuador, Costa Esmeraldas began as a very different farm when the Salazar family founded it over a decade ago.

Freddy’s father purchased two properties on the northeastern side of the beautiful Esmeraldas coast. On formerly dry pastureland and wild forest inaccessible by any road (and not ideal for growing cacao), he and his family created a 10-hectare (25-acre) plantation and cocoa-processing facility. What began as a passion project for the Salazars has evolved into a thriving farm of over 330 hectares (about 850 acres), approximately a third of which is used for growing cacao.

While most cocoa produced on the farm is a variety called Neo-Nacional, the farm also cultivates CCN-51 pods as a cash crop, selling to the local bulk market. In addition, the farm produces bananas and citrus, and 50 hectares (124 acres) of land have been left as virgin forest, creating a thriving habitat for flora and fauna.

Features

Cacao content - 70%. 

2018 Harvest

Ingredients

All of our single-origin chocolate is made with just cocoa beans and sugar; no added cocoa butter, lecithin, or vanilla. Our chocolate is free of soy, dairy, eggs, and gluten, and it is made in a factory that does not process nuts.

cacao beans, cane sugar 

Weight: 56 g 

Maker Description

Dandelion Chocolate, a bean-to-bar chocolate maker in San Francisco's Mission District. For over 10 years, we've been turning cocoa beans and organic sugar into single-origin dark chocolate. We travel and build lasting relationships with cocoa farmers and producers, then craft small batches of chocolate back home in our San Francisco factory. With a minimal approach, we aim to highlight different cocoa beans' distinctive flavor notes—from classic fudge to tangy fruit.