Featured chocolate theme, June 2025
This month’s featured expert is Emily Stone, the CEO and Founder of Uncommon Cacao, a cacao trading company that sources quality cacao from 10,000+ smallholder producers across 15+ countries and sells it to hundreds of chocolate makers globally. Even if you’ve never heard of Uncommon Cacao, you’ve probably tasted the fruits of their work in many craft chocolate bars. They are the world’s leading importer of specialty cacao.
Emily is the pioneer of the transparent trade model in specialty cacao, something that did not exist when I got into this business. Her goal is to de-commoditize the cacao industry and do business differently. What makes Uncommon unique is its focus on best-in-class transparency. It publishes the prices it pays across the value chain and consistently provides excellent quality cacao to its customers. Believe it or not, that’s not the industry standard. Most cacao value chains are controlled by large multi-national corporations that purchase based on price with little regard for quality. The producers (i.e. farmers) are price-takers. They are not able to set the price of their cacao and are beholden to the vagaries of the commodity markets. As a result, it’s difficult for cacao producers to make a living, let alone manage their small business in a way that maintains its viability.
I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with Emily and seeing her work up close during our time on the Board of a trade association and during a week I spent in Belize at Maya Mountain Cacao, a pre-cursor to Uncommon Cacao. She is an impressive force of nature!
We’re excited to welcome Emily as this month’s featured expert for our live member-only event! She is an engaging and passionate speaker who brings an activist’s spirit and a supply chain expert’s pragmatism to her conversations. I’ve watched with admiration as she has engaged some of the biggest names in the commodity industry in lively discussions while turning them into her fans.
Theme: Chocolate made with Uncommon Cacao.
Made with wild cacao foraged from the jungles of the Beni region of Bolivia, these prized Beniano beans are much smaller than other varietals. The reduced surface area of the smaller beans means the chocolate maker must experiment with new roasting times and temperatures to ensure they don’t burn the delicate flavors. According to Heirloom Cacao Preservation (HCP) genetic tests, the cacao is 97.3% Beniano Boliviano with 2.7% Upper Amazon Forastero. While the official tasting notes describe the cacao as having floral and chocolate notes, I taste raisin, walnut, plum and chocolate with a peach finish.
The Colombian farmer association that produces this cacao prides itself on maintaining a clonal garden that highlights the genetic diversity and potential of the region. This diversity contributes to the distinct flavor profile recognized as “Tumaco” cacao, which is characterized by chocolatey notes, light fruit and nut undertones, and a low-acidity finish. In addition to the characteristic flavors ascribed to Tumaco, this bar from Dandelion Chocolate also offers hints of green pepper and banana accompanied by a slightly astringent finish (e.g., the drying sensation caused by tannins).
Using cacao from Maya Mountain in Belize, Seattle-based Spinnaker Chocolate soaks nibs in Bourbon before drying them and refining them into chocolate. The Bourbon balances beautifully with the flavor notes of the Maya Mountain cacao, resulting in a fruity, sea salt caramel flavor that almost makes this taste like an inclusion bar.
Coming to us by way of France, Lady Merveilles uses Maya Mountain cacao to create this French classic of 75% dark chocolate with candied orange peel. Uncommon Cacao is a global operation, purchasing and selling the finest specialty cacao around the globe to reach the best craft chocolate makers, wherever they are.
This fruity and floral cacao is transformed into a sweet, milk chocolate with caramel notes by Monsoon Chocolate in Tucson, AZ. Women lead the centralized fermentation facility in Haiti where PISA purchases wet cacao, ferments it and sells it for a higher price, a result of its superior quality.
