The smallholders harvest their cocoa fruits two to three times a year. Thanks to years of experience, their trained eyes can tell exactly when the fruit is ripe based on size and color, but the most important thing of all is the fruit’s slightly shiny surface. Once the quality has reached the required standard, farmhands cut the fruit from the tree using machetes.

Even on small cocoa farms the size of a football field, the harvest takes several weeks. Cutting the cocoa fruits from the trees still needs to be done by hand, so people from the surrounding area will often be brought in to help with this. For them, it’s a welcome source of extra income. Incidentally, a tree bears about 50 fruits per year on average – enough for 10 to 12 bars of dark chocolate.

After harvesting, the shell of the fresh fruit is opened. Most of the time, this still happens on the farm, and the farmhands use their fingers to remove the jelly-like white pulp with the cocoa seeds. There are about 40 of them in each fruit, and they taste similar to lychees – slightly acidic, wonderfully fresh, and fruity. It’s hard to believe that they will eventually become chocolate.

Fermentation is crucial to how the chocolate will eventually taste. Traditionally wrapped in banana leaves, the cocoa seeds undergo a whole series of chemical and biological processes during this phase. The fruit flesh dries out, and the seeds begin to ferment. This is a complex process where enzymes influence the aromas, but also the purple or brown coloring – and it’s during this process that the cocoa seeds become cocoa beans.

In total, fermentation can take anything from two to seven days. During this time, the temperature between the banana leaves rises to between 45°C to 50°C, and we rely on the local cocoa farmers as the experts to adapt the fermentation process to produce the best results. At the end of the process, the cocoa beans have to meet all of our sensory and qualitative requirements.

Before the cocoa beans make their way to us in Glarus, they are gently dried. This is done the traditional method – on wooden tables in the tropical heat. It takes five to seven days for the moisture content to reach the requisite 7% before being ready to travel. The beans are turned regularly and checked repeatedly until they’re ready and acquire their hallmark bitter cocoa taste and their chocolate-brown color.

After one final on-site quality control check, the cocoa beans are bagged up in jute sacks. After that, it’s off to Europe in a shipping container. On arrival at our small chocolate factory, the beans are examined thoroughly one more time. We pay special attention to the sensory aspects, the fat composition, and the degree of moisture. Only once our laboratory gives the go-ahead can the cocoa beans continue their journey.