Where To Find Some of the World's Best Chocolate

ECUADOR’S SUSTAINABLE, LOCAL PRACTICES HAVE HELPED THE COUNTRY MAKE A CACAO COMEBACK—AND CHOCOLATE LOVERS CAN SHARE IN THE SWEET REWARDS

- SARAH BARRELL

Ecuador sits on a gold mine of cacao. In its 19th-century heyday, the country was the world’s leading exporter, but plant disease and global market changes cost Ecuador its top spot in the early 1900s. Recent years, though, have seen the country make a chocolate comeback—thanks to local farmers, sustainably-minded businesses, and (before travel restrictions) an influx of foodie tourists.

The nation is now famous for its single-origin chocolate. Such production is time-consuming and laborious; it’s done mostly by individual growers working on small-scale farms. During the global coronavirus pandemic, these small farmers have been made more vulnerable.

But there’s unity and resilience within the cacao supply chain. In Ecuador, private and government initiatives have helped aid the transport of cacao to export and offered financial support to farmers.

“Single-origin chocolate put Ecuador on the map,” says Santiago Peralta, co-founder of the organic chocolate company Pacari, which was launched as a way to preserve Ecuador’s native Arriba Nacional cacao variety.

“It would be simpler to buy from a few of Ecuador’s biggest producers, but it’s the smaller, Indigenous farmers who contribute to the world’s genetic bank of cacao,” Peralta says. “That’s what we want: to preserve species and learn about varietals. We have 20 years of work ahead to understand the flavours alone.”

SMALL SCALE, BIG FLAVOUR