About the Nibs :

When I travel to Venezuela looking for cocoa beans, I always make a point of visiting Ocumare—abeautiful colonial town on the Caribbean seashore. Very remote, Ocumare has been famous for the quality of its cocoa for the last few hundred years. It is a long, arduous and sometimes dangerous trek, but the beauty of its people makes the journey well worthwhile.

These nibs are made exclusively from beans from the Ocumare valley. The nibs have a lighter chocolate flavor than those produced by Forestaro beans, yet the flavor is rich and fruity and wonderfully complex. With hints of red fruit, these nibs are roasty, a beautiful addition to many a dish.

To make these nibs, we roast and winnow these precious Ocumare beans ourselves to attain the highest levels of quality and perfection. We quickly seal the resulting cocoa nibs in high-barrier, foil-lined bags, to trap the fine flavors inside. As always, flavor and quality are paramount at Amano. We do all we can to ensure that your chocolate experience is the very best.

Our Guarantee:We use the same beans for our nibs as we use for our chocolate. We refuse to compromise on the quality of our nibs—just as we refuse to compromise on the quality of our chocolate. We believe that our cocoa nibs are the highest quality nibs on the market today.

Founder, Head Chocolate Maker
Amano Artisan Chocolate

Inscription on the Back of the Bag :

On the central coast of Venezuela is a remote valley known as Ocumare de la Coasta. Barely accessible for centuries, the Ocumare region is known for its suprior Criollo cacao. I hand-selected the beans we use in this bar in Ocumare for their pronounced plum and delicate floral notes that underscore their fine chocolate profile. We carefully roast the beans in our antique cocoa roaster to deepen their inherent flavor. These are some of the finest beans I've discovered and from which we have crafted chocolate I believe you will appreciate.

On the Venezuelan Coast is a remote colonial village called Ocumare. Here many cocoa plantations date to the 1700's and produce some of the world's finest cocoa beans. I source the beans we use for these nibs personally. They have a rich chocolate flavor with fruity flavor notes and are one of my personal favorites.

Presentation:

Our goal is to provide you the most perfectly roasted and freshest nibs possible. Our exacting standards demand no less.

Unlike nibs that are roasted and winnowed in foreign countries, transported over the open waters, only to be repackaged long after having gone stale, we roast and winnow our nibs ourselves. Our perfectly roasted nibs are packaged literally within hours (or less) of the time the beans are roasted. This traps all that roasty-chocolaty goodness inside.

We do not stop there; our nibs are packed in a gloss black high barrier foil laminated bags protecting the precious nibs inside from light, moisture, and oxygen. This provides you the ultimate in taste, crunch, and overall freshness.

The gloss black bags also have a luxurious appearance, gold border, and original gold framed photograph that only serves as a prelude to the quality of the nibs inside.

Photographer: Art Pollard

About the Artist:

The photographs used for the cocoa nib bags were taken by Amano's founder and chocolate maker in chief, Art Pollard. When Art graduated from school, he was only a few classes shy of a photography major (among other majors). This is particularly unusual, since Art never applied for "majors only" program. Art studied under John Telford (who worked under Ansel Adams and with the likes of Cole Weston, Eliot Porter, and Irving Penn), Val Brinkerhoff, and Stefan Halburg.

As Art travels the world hunting for the very best cocoa beans with which to make Amano's chocolate, he is able to put his photography skills to use to document his trips and share his photographs with the dedicated fans of Amano's chocolate.

Artist Website: http://www.AmanoChocolate.com

Ingredients:

Roasted Cocoa Beans

Our Single Origin Guarantee:

All of our single origin cocoa nibs are backed up with our "Single Origin Guarantee" so that you know that we have only used beans from Ocumare, Venezuela to create these incredible nibs.