Explore Colombia: Craft Chocolate Tasting with Origen Cacao

Learn from a chocolate maker and cacao farmer and taste her origin made chocolates in a friendly, no frills environment. Please join us as we welcome chocolate maker and cacao farmer, Danielle, owner of Origen Cacao from Colombia for a talk and tasting all about Colombian cacao. Learn about how cacao is grown, how the history of violence and war in Colombia has affected the cacao industry, taste fresh cacao seeds and meet some of cacao's cousins, like cupuaçu and mocambo.Danielle's story has both a simple and a magical version. The simple version is that she came to Colombia about 15 years ago and couldn't understand why it was so difficult to find really good chocolate in a country growing some of the finest cacao in the world. So, she decided to learn how to make it herself. Having recently experienced some major changes in her life, she had fallen completely in love with Colombia, and needed a reason to stay. Cacao became that reason. She learned through curiosity, Google, lots of questions, good people, and a lot of mistakes. Somewhere along the way the chocolate got much better, but something else happened, too. She met Esther, an indigenous Arhuaco woman, and her family, began learning from the Arhuaco traditions of the Sierra Nevada, and discovered that cacao could be much more than an ingredient. What began as a chocolate project slowly became a community, a home, and a completely different way of living. Her 120-hectare nature reserve is nestled in the mountains of Antioquia, where cacao grows among forest, rivers, wildlife and the slightly chaotic collection of people and animals who call this place home.Bring your burning chocolate and cacao questions and get ready to taste the Colombian origin in its purest form.