The Discovery

I found these beans on a Thursday afternoon in Cap-Haïtien in 2013 — not looking for chocolate, but on a UN humanitarian mission that happened to pass through a market. One taste stopped me completely.

That moment became nine years of field research across cacao-producing regions. Haiti was where it started. It is still, in many ways, where the story is most alive.

What Premier Cru Means

Selected for taste before purchase

Every LCDI bar begins before a single kilogram is committed. At Grande Rivière du Nord, I spent time with the cooperative, tasting across harvests until I could identify the lots worth selecting. Only beans that pass my tasting standard make it into an LCDI bar. This is what Premier Cru means in the context of chocolate: not simply single-origin, but the specific lots within an origin chosen for their flavour profile above all else. The beans in this bar earned their place.

Tasting Notes

The Grande Rivière du Nord beans produce a chocolate that is deeply complex — earthy and full-bodied, with a long finish. Dark fruit notes emerge as the bar warms on the tongue.

Dark cherry

Roasted earth

Dried fig

Long finish

The Cooperative

Grande Rivière du Nord sits in the northern highlands of Haiti — the same region where Haitian cacao cultivation has its deepest roots. The cooperative is small by design: a tight network of farmers who prioritise fermentation quality and post-harvest care above volume. These practices are the reason this chocolate is possible.

Haiti

Origin

2013

First sourced

2

Ingredients

1 of 5

Collection origins

What's In It

Cacao. Sugar. Nothing else. No added cocoa butter, no lecithin, no vanilla — no additives of any kind. The flavour you taste is the flavour of the bean: the soil it grew in, the way it was fermented, the care taken at every step before it reached our factory in New York.

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View all five origins →

Dark Chocolate

Haiti

2013

2

1 of 5