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Our CHOCOLATE

SOURCING & PROCESS

Two Ingredient, Bean To Bar Chocolate

  • A group of people, including a man in the foreground wearing a black hat and white polo shirt, gathered around drying trays filled with cacao beans. The man appears to be explaining or demonstrating something, gesturing with his hands over the beans.

    HIGH QUALITY CACAO

    You don’t need much to make good chocolate. The most crucial ingredient is high-quality cacao. All of our cacao comes from Colombia and Peru.

  • A pile of cut cane sugar stalks laid on the ground.

    SWEETENED WITH CARE

    We use organic cane sugar from Brazil, sourced from Global Organics.

  • **Alt Text:** A ripe, orange-brown cacao pod resting on a pile of dried cacao beans, displayed on a rustic wooden surface. The pod has a ridged texture, and the beans are dark brown with a slightly rough appearance.

    CHOCOLATE

    Once we have our two ingredients, we blend them together to craft the greatest, most delicious, mouth-watering chocolate you could ask for.

CRAFTED WITH CARE

  • A group of people, including a man in the foreground wearing a black hat and white polo shirt, gathered around drying trays filled with cacao beans. The man appears to be explaining or demonstrating something, gesturing with his hands over the beans.

    ROOTED IN HERITAGE

    Our founder, Aaron, is Colombian. To honor his heritage, Cocoa Legato has always been dedicated to sourcing primarily Colombian cacao. We partner with Cacaitos to source beans from the Chigorodó region. While the beans may not be certified organic, all cacao is grown using organic methods. We work with small enough farms that an official certification is not fiscally reasonable.

    Additionally, we source Peruvian cacao from Cacao Life. In 2024, our founder took a trip to Cuzco to meet with the farmers we’re partnering with. You can see a photo of Aaron meeting with Edgar Adanibar, the head of the Co-Op, and Marco Fernadnez-Concha, the Co-Founder of Cacao Life. These beans are certified Organic.

  • A pile of cut cane sugar stalks laid on the ground.

    'GREEN HARVESTED' SUGAR

    We use organic cane sugar from Brazil, sourced from Global Organics. This ensures that every bar is made with ingredients that are as respectful to the planet as they are to your taste buds.

    Globlal Organics uses ‘green harvesting’ to mechanically harvest sugarcane without burning the fields. The traditional method of burning sugar cane to harvest releases large amounts of particulate matter and toxic air pollutants, which cause serious health problems to humans, wildlife, and near by plant life.

  • **Alt Text:** A ripe, orange-brown cacao pod resting on a pile of dried cacao beans, displayed on a rustic wooden surface. The pod has a ridged texture, and the beans are dark brown with a slightly rough appearance.

    POURED WITH PRIDE

    We’re here to help bring representation to the craft chocolate industry. We’re proudly a Queer and Latinx-owned business and seek to foster a diverse and welcoming team of chocolate makers.

What does ‘Bean to Bar’ mean?

"Bean to Bar" is a standard term in the chocolate world, meaning we’re part of the entire process starting with raw cacao beans from our trusted suppliers that we roast, refine, and mold into rich, handcrafted chocolate, right here in-house. Scroll down for a deep dive into our process.

  • An icon that stylistically represents three cocoa pods hanging from of tree branch with leaves

    1. Cocoa Tree and Pods

    An evergreen tree that grows about 20 degrees north and south of the equator. This tree produces cocoa pods. These pods are what eventually become chocolate.

  • An icon made with bold line art that shows two fermentation boxes with fermenting cocoa beans under banana leaves

    2. Fermentation Boxes

    If you open a cacao pod, you’ll find a slimy mucus covering little cocoa beans. The fruit and beans are scooped out and placed into the fermentation boxes made from wood. The beans are then covered with banana leaves, trapping all the local bacteria in the air in the box. This allows fermentation to occur, the first step in flavor development!

  • A lineart graphic that depicts cocoa beans raked out on to large drying beds

    3. Drying

    After 5 – 7 days of fermentation, the beans will be raked out onto large drying beds so the excess fruit will evaporate.

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    4. Bags

    Beans are placed into large burlap sacks so they can safely make the journey from South America to our factory in Seattle.

  • Black and white illustration of a roaster with steam rising from it.

    5. Roasting

    Roasting is a key step in flavor development. We roast our beans in a small convection oven. Since each type of cacao is unique, we roast our Colombian and Peruvian beans with completely different roast curves.

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    6. Winnowing

    The next step is to remove the husk of the cocoa bean. Our Winnower crushes the beans into pieces and uses vacuums to remove the husks, leaving us with tiny cocoa nibs!

  • Line drawing of a commercial popcorn machine on a metal stand, with a glass enclosure and a popcorn container inside.

    7. Milling

    Time to pulverize! We toss our nibs into our large stone grinders and, over a 24-48 hours period, the nibs will be pulverized into a liquid form. We add sugar halfway through that process, giving us liquid chocolate!

  • Tempering and Depositing

    8. Tempering and Depositing

    The final steps are to temper the chocolate (come take a class, and we’ll tell you all about that), add any extra fun inclusion, and then deposit the liquid chocolate into our molds.

  • Chocolate Bar Mold Graphic

    9. Bar Mold

    After letting that chocolate cool and solidify for a short period of time - you got a chocolate bar, baby!

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We’ve got bars.

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