Zotter Opus 5 75%

Dark Chocolate

Conching time: 20 hrs.

This cacao from Tanzania thrives near a national park and presents with an aroma cocktail of red fruit, berries, apples, plums and tropical fruit. The fine flavor cacao with its gingerbread and caramelized almond flavor hails from Para in Brazil, where Julia Zotter spent a summer living with a cacao farming family, working with them and gaining much knowledge about cacao cultivation. Also in the mix: cacao with a strong chocolate flavor from Ghana, and some Maya cacao from Belize and Guatemala, where the Maya have lived and cultivated cacao for many generations. Guatemala is home to a multitude of hidden valleys where 200-year-old cacao trees still grow and where a rare cacao variety with a high Criollo content has managed to survive. Criollo is the highest quality cacao variety in the world, and it is extremely hard to find. Each cacao varietal is roasted individually and then combined to produce the ultimate cacao blend, offering its entire, vast cacao panorama.