Style
Woody, floral and herbal Bright, elegant and strong.
Its color, light brown, reveals an important proportion of white beans, around 30 to 40%. The chocolate is bright, elegant and sophisticated at the same time. At the back of the dry wood notes one can feel delicate floral aromas and refreshing dried herbs such as thyme and rosemary. The light astringency in the background brings freshness and character. A masculine and elegant experience. This unique cacao genetic had made Ecuador famous for its cacao for more than 400 years during the colonial times. Two simultaneous diseases extinguished it around 1929 but it was accidentally rediscovered, accidentally in the North of Peru about 10 years ago.

Origin
It comes from the north of PERU.There is a very well know cacao region called PIURA in the north of PERU but this" canyon" where Fortunato cacao comes from is not there, it is a bit more east from Piura - but clearly the north, close to the border with Ecuador and this is why there is this cacao variety called NACIONAL that used to be "THE" jewel of Ecuador, the signature of cacao from Ecuador, a genetic that disappeared from Ecuador in the years 1929 because 2 cacao diseases affected the crop. so today Ecuador has only 20 trees pure national. Plants do not care about geographic borders and this cacao was in north of PERU that in the old past was Ecuador, and protected from the disease because isolated in a canyon.


This cacao is a very complex cacao to work with as there are around 20 to 30% white beans in the beans from the moment they are taken out of the pod (fruit)- White beans do not have tannins (tannins gives the purple color)- White beans need a different fermentation and roasting from purple beans . But it is impossible to see the color of the beans as they are always "whole", during the fermentation and during the roasting- it is only at the cracking /winnowing stage that we can see inside the beans. so when you ferment and when you roast you cannot know the color of the beans without cutting them so fermentation as well as roasting are done as the optimal way to fit both colors of beans.

The team in charge of fermentation decided to ferment for the white beans, these beans need less fermentation than the purple beans- This is why there is an important proportion of bean under fermented , the purple beans did not get enough fermentation. The idea was to give priority to the white beans that are more aromatic and with more interesting aromas than the purple beans.

Green bean to bar chocolate maker did 3 different roasts, all mild roasts to respect the delicate aromas of the white beans. They noticed that each of the roasts revealed very different notes, all interesting. They decided to blend the 3 roasts together and make a chocolate more complex and multi dimensional.