Story
In 1989, 5 year-old Sebastian Cisneros was gliding through the countryside in his family’s car, descending down from the Andes in Ecuador, transitioning from the lush cloud forest down into the tropical lowlands. Through the open windows the aroma of just-fermented cacao seeds drying on hot pavement fascinated and confused and ultimately enchanted young Sebastian.
In the fall of 2009, we embarked upon a mission to tease out and understand the nuances of cacao and create unconventional chocolate flavor combinations. Our initial setup only allowed us to source already-processed chocolate from larger fine chocolate makers in Europe, combine it with our recipes, and reshape it into bars.
In 2014, we launched our first chocolate bar featuring single-estate Ecuadorian cacao, under the name Cloudforest. Unlike our previous releases, this bar marked the first time we took control of all processing steps from dry cacao beans to its final chocolate form. These steps included roasting the cacao beans, refining the roasted cacao with sugar, and conching (homogenizing and deacidifying) the chocolate to improve flavor and texture.
We have been fortunate to grow at an independent pace to a point where our chocolate is now represented through various retail outlets across the country. Our growth has allowed us to strengthen our relationships with cacao and vanilla growers and build a small team of avid chocolate makers who now are an integral part and contributors to this story.
