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Duarte province, Dominican Republic
Loma Verde group of five farms
Five neighbouring family farms, organised by Mercedes Peña, who has fermented cacao on the same patio for thirty-one years.
Mercedes was the first in Loma Verde to stop selling wet beans to the truck that came through the valley. She built her own fermentation boxes, learned to read the mass by hand, and four neighbouring families now ferment alongside her.
The group keeps their organic certification in their own names rather than an exporter's, which means the premium stays in the valley. Part of what we pay goes into a shared fund they decide on themselves — last year it went to replacing the drying roof.
Their cacao is the brighter, more citric side of what we make. If a block tastes of dried fruit and molasses, it came from this hillside.
