Letterpress Dark Chocolate - Ecuador Costa Esmeralda

     Club ChoKolate's first available bar made with cacao from Ecuador had to be made by Letterpress, one of our favorite dark chocolate makers. The cacao beans are grown in the region of Esmeraldas, an area not typically known for its cacao.      Costa Esmeraldas is a family business, solely owned and operated by the Salazar family. This private estate farm was established on reclaimed cattle field and is currently planted with approximately one hundred hectares of five-year-old Nacional hybrid cacao. Would you like to know the specific clones? Well, we have those, they are EET-95, EET-96, and EET-103. We believe that this family's idea to use the land to plant the source of future dark chocolate was the best!      The farm is now developing, and they plan to include ten hectares of a legendary Esmeraldas cacao varietal, with red-colored cacao pods resembling some criollo varieties thought to be its origin. This cacao was grown in isolation for over one hundred years from the typical