Pure Chocolate Sierra Leone, Gola Forest 71%

Deep in eastern Sierra Leone lies the Gola Rainforest, one of West Africa’s remaining great forest landscapes. It is home to an extraordinary variety of plants and wildlife, and the forest plays an important role in protecting biodiversity and supporting the communities who live alongside it.

The cacao from the Gola region also has a story beyond the beans themselves. The farmers live and work alongside the forest, making cacao part of a landscape rich in wildlife and biodiversity.

For the farmers, cacao is a labour of patience. The pods are carefully harvested by hand when they are ripe. The beans then go through an important fermentation process, where the flavours begin to develop. After fermentation, they are carefully dried, traditionally in the warmth of the Sierra Leonean sun, until they reach the right condition for storage and transport.

Once these beans arrive at Faraway Garden, their journey continues in my little chocolate kitchen. I roast, crack, winnow and grind the beans in small batches, adding only the ingredients needed to turn this beautiful cacao into chocolate.

I hope that you enjoy this bar and take a moment to appreciate the journey behind it; from cacao growing beneath the West African sun, through the hands of the people who care for it, all the way to this little bar of Faraway Garden chocolate.

INGREDIENTS: Cocoa beans (Sierra Leone, Gola Forest), sugar, 1% cocoa butter (Ecuador).