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Mark Moxon's Travel Writing

Nicaragua: The Chocolate Factory

The stones used to grind the roasted chocolate beans
The stones used to grind the roasted chocolate beans

Apart from coffee, the other thing apart that Matagalpa grows in the luscious hills around town is cocoa, and where there's cocoa, there's chocolate. To be honest, Nicaragua isn't particularly famous for its chocolate, and while the locals do eat and drink it, it's pretty grim stuff for those of us who are more used to organic chocolate with lots of cocoa content. Local Nicaraguan chocolate is more about sugar than cocoa, and it's pretty disappointing.

The factory at El Castillo
The factory at El Castillo

From Bean to Bar

José demonstrating the roasting machine
José demonstrating the roasting machine

Like coffee, chocolate starts off as a raw bean, this time the cocoa bean. Cocoa beans grow in large pods that tend to bud off the trunk of the cocoa tree, and when they're ripe, the pods are harvested and cracked open to reveal lots of cocoa beans, all surrounded by a pulp. The beans are left to ferment in a long, wooden trough, which dries out the pulp, but unlike coffee beans they aren't washed, but are instead laid straight out to dry in the sun.

Mark and Peta donning face masks and hair nets before entering the factory
Donning face masks and hair nets before entering the factory
Roasted, ground and winnowed cocoa beans
Roasted, ground and winnowed cocoa beans
Mixing in the sugar
Mixing in the sugar
The packaging materials
The packaging materials
All the chocolate is packaged up by hand
All the chocolate is packaged up by hand
The finished product
The finished product