Award-Winning Chocolate, Made Where the Cacao Grows

A vegan golden milk chocolate bar: 85 percent Ecuadorian dark cacao, turmeric, cardamom, coconut. Almost everything on that list grew on a single farm in Ecuador's cloud forest, on ground that was barren cattle pasture before two women spent years planting it back into forest.

Tiffany Rose, co-founder of Choco Estates, describes the beginning with disarming simplicity: her business partner Kristen Krash and Krash's partner arrived in Ecuador with "a tent and some hand tools." What they built from that starting point offers a template for craft producers everywhere who wonder whether doing things differently can actually work.

"Can we actually do this? Is this something that the market is going to support?" That was the question Choco Estates asked themselves, and every small-batch producer runs into a version of it: how do you source quality ingredients transparently while competing against industrial models built on volume?

In Sofia, Flow Cacao, a family-owned cacao roastery, works on a similar principle with single-origin Latin American beans.

The Bar That Won for Being Different

At the 2026 Craft Chocolat Challenge, an international competition for bean-to-bar makers that began in 2022, the golden milk bar won Choco Estates the top innovation award.

Tiffany Rose

We weren't expecting to win. To win for innovation, which is something that we really pride ourselves on, and to be recognized for that was really validating.

The recipe emerged from observation: Krash noticed the popularity of golden milk lattes and saw a chocolate bar in it. The connection between cacao origin and supporting ingredients wasn't a marketing angle; it was simply what the land offered. "The combination of flavours and also, how well they work together" is what Rose believes caught the judges' attention.

Keeping Value Where the Cacao Grows

The business model challenges how cacao typically moves through the world. Most chocolate production happens far from where cacao is grown, beans ship to Europe or North America, where they're processed, with most value captured thousands of kilometres from the farmers.

Rose and Krash chose differently.

Tiffany Rose

We really want to do as much of the production in Ecuador so that the jobs stay there, the skills stay there and the people who are actually growing the cacao are getting the most value out of it.

The approach creates a network connecting small-scale Ecuadorian farmers using agroecology practices, growing cacao among fruit, spices, and timber in a structure mimicking natural forest, to craft chocolate makers in North America. The challenges are real: navigating regulations, proving market viability, maintaining persistence. "We don't give up very easily," Rose said.

Ancestral Beans That Refuse Uniformity

Choco Estates works with an ancestral strain, roots stretching back thousands of years, rather than commercial hybrids bred for consistent yields. The flavour profile varies by region, a feature that industrial supply chains would consider a defect but that craft makers treat as opportunity.

Customers have already requested darker bars. "We've even had some requests for, like, 100 per cent dark chocolate bars," Rose noted.

How to Actually Taste It

Rose's advice for first-time customers reveals the philosophy behind everything Choco Estates makes:

Tiffany Rose

Take a little piece of it, let it melt on your tongue. Are they noticing a flavour right up front? And what is that flavour? And then, once it's been in your mouth for a while, is there another flavour that's coming through?

"There's so much subtlety in this chocolate," Rose said. "It's such an incredible flavour experience. It's not like a candy bar that you would just eat and consume in, like, two minutes."

The recognition functions as confirmation rather than destination. "It just is sort of like a nod that we're on the right path," Rose said. The path leads back to that cloud forest, where barren land became something alive.