Colors Chocolate

Most chocolate that says "Dominican" on the wrapper was made a very long way from here.

The Dominican Republic is one of the world's biggest exporters of organic cocoa. Around forty thousand smallholder families grow it, and the overwhelming majority of what they harvest leaves the country as raw beans — to be fermented, roasted, conched and wrapped in Europe, and sold back at a considerable mark-up with a picture of a palm tree on it.

Colors is what happens when that does not occur.

It is made in Mao, in Valverde province, about ninety minutes inland from the lagoon — by friends of ours who grow their own cacao and run their own factory. Bean to bar in the most literal sense: the tree, the fermentation, the roast and the wrapper are all within a short drive of each other, and all of it organic.

What that actually means when you eat it is that it tastes like the place. Chocolate made where the cacao grows has not spent six weeks in a shipping container losing its edges. It is a different product from the airport version, and after one bar the airport version is hard to go back to.

It also melts. Properly, in the way real chocolate does — which is the clearest evidence you will get that there is nothing in it holding it together. Do not leave it on the dashboard.

Ten dollars. On the shelf at both schools, alongside the cigars, the oregano and the salt.