This very special bar is crafted from the single sack of ancient Nicaragua Criollo beans that were produced by farmer Giff Laube this harvest season.

Over a decade ago Giff discovered what he thought may be ancient Criollo trees in a remote jungle near the Yasica river in Nicaragua. He had the leaves from several trees tested by the USDA (test results below), and one tree (identified as “Laube 1” on the test results) turned out to actually be ancient Nicaragua Criollo. Giff cleared a section of his farm away from his other trees and began to propagate this ancient Criollo through grafting.

This year, almost ten years after first beginning this labor of love, Giff’s painstakingly grafted and nurtured trees finally produced enough beans for a single sack of dried cacao. He sent us that sack.

The beans themselves are white, which result in a light brown color once dried (see cut test picture in the gallery). They’re extremely small, and with only one sack we had to get everything right the first time. After deciding on the best roasting temperature we carefully monitored the entire roast, tasting beans at one-minute intervals and stopping the roast as soon as we felt the flavors were fully developed. We took a similar approach with the conch, tasting hourly throughout the process and stopping the grinders once we felt the chocolate had reached peak flavor.

The flavors in this bar are intense and exquisite, with notes of juicy strawberries, cream, honey and cashews (among others). It’s fascinating to think that these may be some of the same flavors that indigenous Latin American peoples tasted in their cacao hundreds of years ago.

Goodnow Farms finished this bar just before the start of the Northwest Chocolate Festival in early October, which is where they released it. The reaction was overwhelming and extremely gratifying – the bar received the highest score in the dark chocolate category at the awards ceremony on the first night of the festival, and they sold out of the bars we brought with us within hours. Giff was there, too, as they had paid for his flight from Nicaragua, and he and Monica gave a presentation about the bar on the festival’s main stage. It was wonderful to see Giff receiving the recognition he deserved for all his years of dedication to making this chocolate a reality.

Since only one sack of beans was produced this is a very, very limited release bar. The price is also much higher than our usual bars, although it doesn’t even begin to cover the true costs of bringing this bar to market. This is a passion project for everyone involved.