Indonesia

Single Origin Chocolate: Indonesia

Cocoa is deemed as one of the most important agriculture exports of the country. In the past 25 years, Indonesia’s cocoa sector has gone through massive growth driven by farmer participation in the smallholder realm. The smallholders are attributed to provide the majority of the national production, even more so than large private estates. The global demand of chocolate is increasing by 3% each year, on average, although the largest hurdle these smallholder farmers face is the lack of financial needs to optimize their production capabilities. Farmers are now transitioning to producing rubber, coconut, and palm oil (the country’s three largest exports) for financial reasons, not to mention the country’s inadequate infrastructure. There is still a large availability of these single-origin beans, but a revamp of their system would be extremely beneficial in further industrializing this export.

Reference: Indonesia Investments. (2017). Cocoa in Indonesia.

Indonesia

World Wide Chocolate has a handful of single-origin offerings from Indonesia, crafted by Bonnat & Pralus. Bonnat in particular offers three milk chocolate bars, all with 65% cocoa content, higher than most, if not all, other milk chocolate producers. These bars all have a unique taste of their own, with an extremely creamy mouth feel due to the incorporated cocoa butter. Pralus incorporates a minor percentage of Ghana-origin beans to balance the natural acidity of the Javanese beans, thus not entirely single origin, although this beautiful flavor primarily resides from Indonesia, thus the labeling.