On a Thursday evening in June, members of The Chocolate Explorers Club gathered virtually for a guided chocolate tasting with Emily Stone, founder and CEO of Uncommon Cacao. We unwrapped five chocolate bars to taste together, each one embodying Uncommon Cacao’s transparent trade philosophy that delivers amazing flavor and transforms how we think about chocolate.
Emily’s company has revolutionized cacao sourcing by shortening the supply chain between cacao farmers and chocolate makers. Instead of the traditional maze of intermediaries that can separate farmers from their end customers by five or six steps, Uncommon Cacao works directly with farming cooperatives and exporters, improving quality and creating transparency at every level. “We’re an exporter at Maya Mountain in Belize, and then Uncommon is an importer,” Emily explained. “There’s basically just us between the farmers and chocolate makers.”
Our evening’s tasting journey led us to taste five chocolates from four countries, all made with cacao sourced by Uncommon. The origins included Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, and Haiti, each one representing years of relationship building and a commitment to quality. With bars in hand and palates ready, we dove into the story of Uncommon Cacao while tasting its impact on specialty chocolate.
We started our tasting with an inclusion bar made with bourbon-soaked cacao nibs. The infusion of Bourbon added layers of complexity that had our members reaching for descriptive language. “Strong peach aroma,” noted Lauren, while Benjamin called out “notes of leather and dried fruit in the best possible way.” Emily herself found “dried pineapple and raisin,” and as the tasting progressed, a chorus of fruit flavors emerged, including dried pear, honey, caramel, and what Emily described as “almost like a peach cobbler with those warm spices.”
This bourbon bar showcases Maya Mountain cacao from Belize, where Emily’s transparent trade journey began over a decade ago. The secret to Maya Mountain’s consistent quality lies in centralized fermentation. Instead of individual farmers managing fermentation boxes in their homes, the cacao is processed at a central facility where temperature, pH, and timing can be precisely controlled.
“Basically, farmers were having to do all of the work of farming cacao and then bring the fresh cacao back to their homes, where they would have a fermentation box, oftentimes inside their home,” Emily explained. The result was inconsistent quality and frustrated farmers. By centralizing the process, Maya Mountain now works with over 450 certified organic growers, creating the consistent flavor foundation that allows Spinnaker to experiment with bourbon-soaked nibs.
The genetic diversity of Maya Mountain cacao contributes to its balanced profile. Emily told us that according to Heirloom Cacao Preservation analysis, 41% of the genetics are Amelonado, known for round, smooth, chocolatey flavors, while 9% are Criollo,14% are Nacional and 36% are Forastero. This diversity, partly due to interesting genetics imported by Hershey in the 1970s, creates the flavor complexity we tasted.
Our second chocolate took us to the remote rivers of Bolivia’s Amazon basin, where Beniano cacao grows wild in groves accessible only by boat. This bar represents one of the most challenging sourcing stories in the chocolate world.
The Itenéz cacao comes from communities who travel by boat to harvest wild cacao that’s 97.3% pure Beniano genetics, unchanged for generations. “People go in their boats from their communities to look for the chocolatales, which is what they call the cacao growing stands throughout the river area,” Emily described. The beans are collected, brought back to villages for centralized fermentation, and then purchased by their partner Volker Lehmann.
What makes this cacao particularly challenging for chocolate makers is the bean size. While industry standard is 85-100 beans per 100 grams, Itenéz averages 158 beans per 100 gram, literally the size of a pinky fingernail. “There’s nothing about this cacao that’s easy,” Emily admitted, “but it makes such delicious chocolate.”
Members thought the chocolate tasted deliciously “fudgy” with Barbie describing the chocolate as having “lovely mild cashew notes with deep fudge and a pleasantly bitter finish.”
The wild environment where this cacao grows intersects with complex realities, including the presence of coca cultivation in the region. Yet the communities remain committed to cacao as an alternative crop, creating chocolate that captures the essence of the Amazon rainforest.
As we moved to our third chocolate, member Kathy immediately noticed something distinctive, “I’m wondering if it was dried by fire and wood, because I’m detecting smokiness in this bar.”
Emily confirmed that Tumaco’s unique profile comes partly from extended drying during the region’s extremely wet harvest season. “Cacao comes into harvest during the rainy season, and so the drying period tends to be really long,” she explained. The cooperatives use solar-powered mechanical drying to accelerate the process, but the extended drying time contributes to the rich, dark chocolate character that members like Betsy described as “dry and smoky.”
Known as “Perla Negra”, this cacao represents the highest quality produced in Tumaco, a region on Colombia’s southwest border with Ecuador. What makes it special is how farmers preserved their native genetics despite pressure to plant industrial varieties. “Throughout the time that the government was trying to hand out CCN-51 seedlings, the farmers would take the root stock, and then they would graft on their local genetics,” Emily shared.
The result is chocolate that maintains the distinctive character of Colombian terroir while showcasing the skill of farmers who refused to compromise their heritage for industrial efficiency.
Our only milk chocolate of the evening revealed why cacao from the PISA Haiti organization has gained respect among craft chocolate makers. The naturally sweet, creamy profile impressed our members, with many noting how well it worked in a 40% milk chocolate format.
“It’s one of our most popular beans,” Emily noted. “It’s a bean that we import in containers, and they sell out very quickly because it works so well in almost any format.” Members could taste why. The natural sweetness and vanilla notes make it incredibly versatile, whether for high-percentage dark bars or creamy milk chocolates like Monsoon’s interpretation.
What makes this chocolate even more remarkable isn’t just its flavor, but the conditions from which it emerges. Haiti currently has no functioning government and appears on travel warning lists, yet PISA, the women-led organization in northern Haiti that sources this cacao, has been “one of our most consistent suppliers,” Emily marveled. “My mind has been blown over and over again by the consistency and just the resilience of these communities.”
PISA operates in Cap-Haïtien, in northern Haiti’s Côte du Nord region, far removed from the instability centered in Port-au-Prince. Here, French agronomist Aline Etlicher established Haiti’s first centralized fermentation operation.
“Farmers in Haiti grow cacao in what they call Creole gardens, which are very specifically interplanted with fruit trees, hardwood trees, all kinds of crops,” Emily explained. “So cacao is sort of like the ATM, where they’ll go harvest cacao and sell that to get cash, and then a lot of the other crops on the farm they’re consuming as part of their daily routine.”
PISA’s consistent supply and quality offer an illustration of how direct relationships can bring stability in the face of local instability.
Our final chocolate brought us back to Belize Maya Mountain cacao, but this time interpreted through the lens of French chocolate-making tradition. Lady Merveilles’ Marine Schmitt brings decades of experience from Michelin Star restaurants to her organic bean-to-bar operation in Brittany, France.
The orange inclusion creates a connection to this Belize cacao’s history. The original Maya Gold bar produced by Green & Black’s in the 1980s used this same cacao and featured orange and allspice to honor traditional Maya drinking chocolate preparations. “It’s very interesting that we’re going to be tasting an orange bar from Lady Merveilles that is actually part of Maya Gold history,” Emily noted.
Marine’s technical background in French patisserie brings both precision and playfulness to her chocolate making. As one of the only certified organic French bean-to-bar chocolate factories, Lady Merveilles represents the growing appreciation for transparent trade chocolate in European markets.
This bar was a member favorite, with members noting the harmonious balance between the Maya Mountain cacao’s fruit notes and the candied orange, creating a sophisticated interpretation of traditional flavor combinations.
Each chocolate in our tasting represented years of relationship building, beginning with Emily’s initial trip to Belize in 2010 to the ongoing partnerships that weather everything from hurricanes to global price volatility. These bars taste different not just because of terroir or processing, but because they’re made from cacao grown by farmers who have direct connections to the chocolate makers who buy their crops.
As conscious consumers, we have the power to support this model simply by seeking out chocolate makers who source transparently. When we choose bars made with cacao from companies like Uncommon Cacao, we’re voting for a supply chain that values quality, sustainability, and fair compensation over pure efficiency.
The next time you unwrap a bar of craft chocolate, take a moment to consider the journey it represents. Think of the farmers, fermentation experts, and chocolate makers working together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Appreciate the flavors of chocolate that honor both the craft and the people who make it possible.
