- The variety of cacao that we use is so rare
it makes up less than 1% of global chocolate production.
If you are a chocolate lover, keep watching
because you're gonna wanna know about this.
So this magical variety that we use
is called Arriba Nacional,
and this is an heirloom chocolate variety.
This is not being hybridized.
It's not a Trinitario or a Forastero.
This is not CCN-51,
the heavy industrialized hybrid
that is known for having a flavor of acidic dirt,
so you have to put so much sugar and other stuff in there
to make it taste any good.
No, this is the ultimate heirloom original.
And it's not just about what genetics it has
in terms of being an original heirloom,
but it's about where it's growing.
Okay, so you might think I'm gonna say next
that we have this beautiful farm or this plantation.
Nope, we don't.
We don't have a farm.
We don't have a plantation.
We have nature.
These beans that we use to make our chocolate,
to make our cacao powder, to make our cacao nibs
are exclusively coming
from wild grown cacao trees in Ecuador.
These are out there growing in the jungle,
in their natural environment.
There's no fence.
There's no monocropping.
This is nature as intended.
And so when you grow something in the wild like this,
it has a different level of genetic robustness, of nutrition
because it has to survive.
You're not protecting it with a fence.
You're not pulling out all the weeds
and keeping anything else from competing with it.
This thing has to survive out there
in the competition of the wild.
There is no joke.
The hardiness of a plant like this to survive that
is on a different level, completely,
than something that just grows up on a farm.
And so these are growing in this volcanic soil,
which is incredibly mineral-rich,
and they're not young trees, either.
These are generally between 40 and 60-years-old,
sometimes as old as 80 years.
So they have not just been pulling
a couple of years' worth of nutrition out of the soil.
They have been out there,
pulling up nutrients for decades.
They've been dominating this wild environment and thriving.
It's not like they've just survived
four or five years out there, but then they're gonna die
'cause it's not such a strong tree.
These things are deeply rooted in thriving out there.
And the other unique thing
about the way this cacao is growing
is that instead of incentivizing people
to clear land and create a farm,
we're incentivizing the local people
to actually be great environmental stewards
of the jungle and of the rainforest
because now they can make three to four times
what they would make from harvesting
more common strains of cacao beans
by getting this wild grown cacao.
So they're incentivized to protect it
and to take care of it and to nurture it.
So that's, to me, actually one of the coolest things
about our cacao overall.
Now, once it's harvested, it's then fermented and dried
and we do this with traditional techniques
in very small batches and carefully
to prevent growth of mold and mycotoxins.
This is something that is present
in almost all cacao products.
In fact, about a year and a half, two years ago,
we got a call from a university researcher
who was working on putting together a study,
looking at the effects of a mycotoxin,
and mycotoxins, these are mold toxins
that we're talking about here,
byproducts of mold in food.
She was looking at the effects of
and putting together a study to look at the effects
of a mycotoxin-free diet in a population of people,
specifically children who are very sensitive to mycotoxins
with certain health issues that they have.
And to do this, she had to find sources
for a bunch of different foods
that would be mycotoxin-free.
So these kids could eat a relatively normal diet
while not consuming mycotoxins.
And I think the two most difficult things
that she had a hard time finding were coffee and chocolate.
And so she called us up after she tested our chocolate
and she said I'd ordered all these different ones
and tested so many, yours is the only one
that I found that was completely mycotoxin-free.
And of course, you can imagine how big I was smiling
when I heard that over the phone.
And the mycotoxin testing that they did
was actually even more extensive
than the one that we do ourselves.
They were testing for all kinds of obscure
different mycotoxins.
So it was so cool to have that affirmed
what we already knew, but just even on a deeper level.
And so we've got this ultra pure cacao
that is now a fermented food,
which not a lot of people know.
And we do something else different.
We don't roast our cacao.
We keep it raw, so we are protecting
the integrity of some heat sensitive compounds
in the chocolate that would otherwise be destroyed
in the roasting process.
And so the chocolate is in stone ground
over a period of 10 to 12 hours, very slowly.
And the facility where we're doing this
only processes this wild cacao.
It's not like they do this cacao for a couple of hours,
then somebody else brings in some other lower quality stuff
and it maybe gets cross-mixed.
Nope.
This is the only thing being processed there.
Now, in terms of the energetics,
I would say let's look at this from the Taoist herbal
Chinese herbal perspective.
In terms of the three treasures,
we would say we're looking at yang jing, qi,
shen and blood.
And in terms of the atmospherics,
it's subtly cooling but in excess,
it's gonna be a little bit heating.
And flavor-wise, it's bitter, it's sweet and astringent.
And then in terms of organ systems,
you're looking at heart, kidneys, and spleen.
So if you guys have had an experience with our chocolate,
I'd love to hear you share it in the comments
and leave us a like down below.
It really does help us win this journey
to reach more people and connect with more folks
and share our love for chocolate.
Thanks again so much for joining me today, guys.
Hope you have a wonderful day
and look forward to seeing you again soon.