Maker Profile: Kallari

For several months now, I've been meaning to write a series of postings highlighting information about each chocolate maker, but it took meeting several of them at the Northwest Chocolate Festival to motivate me to actually start writing. Here is the first of hopefully many to come...

company name	Kallari
website	http://www.kallari.com
email	info.kallari@gmail.com
chocolate maker	Carlos Pozo
factory location	Quito, Ecuador
factory tours	yes
direct online purchase	N/A
direct stores	N/A
retail online purchase	Chocosphere
retail store purchase	Whole Foods Market local cooperative and natural food stores
selling bars since	2005
plantation bars	none
single origin bars	85% Cacao (Ecuador) 75% Cacao (Ecuador) 70% Cacao (Ecuador) Sinchi Supreme 85% (Ecuador)
blend bars	none
other bars	none
production cycle	tree to bar
added fat	cocoa butter from same cacao beans
sweetener	cane sugar
flavoring	whole vanilla bean
emulsifier	none
organic	all bars USDA certified
sustainable	all bars Rainforest Alliance certified
economics	farmer owned profit-sharing among cooperative
last updated	October 27, 2011

Kallari Chocolate is a chocolate maker from Ecuador. As a farming cooperative that produces chocolate bars, Kallari manages the entire production cycle from growing the cacao trees to packaging the final chocolate bars. They sort their beans by hand, keeping the best for themselves and selling the rest to other chocolate companies.

From the back of their chocolate bar wrappers: "We are KALLARI, a cooperative of 850 indigenous Kichwa families in the Upper Napo Region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. We plant, care for, and harvest our award-winning heirloom cacao beans to create this single-source organic chocolate. We share 100% of chocolate profits amongst our 21 rainforest communities to maintain our way of life in one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth."

The motto of Kallari Chocolate is "sustainable pleasure for palate and planet". Kallari's chocolate is certified organic by the USDA. It is also certified by the Rainforest Alliance that it was produced in a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable way.

Kallari makes both couverture and chocolate bars. They use organic cane sugar as a sweetener, add cocoa butter made from their own organic cacao beans, and include organic whole vanilla beans. Kallari does not use an emulsifier in their chocolate. Their chocolate maker is Carlos Pozo. He is also the general coordinator of the Kallari Association and still continues to grow cacao as well!

Because their factory is close to their farms, there is much less delay after the cacao beans are dry before they are processed into chocolate. Kallari currently makes three chocolate bars that vary by the amount of cocoa solids: 70%, 75%, and 85%. They are also in the process of introducing four new hand-tempered bars (which won't be available in the U.S. until later next year).

During the harvest season (January to June), Kallari encourages tours of their farms near Tena and their factory in Quito. Lin-Mar Associates in New York organizes trips that include Kallari tours. The current leased factory in Quito will be replaced next year by a new one they are building in Tena.

Kallari chocolate is available for purchase online at Chocosphere and in stores at Whole Foods Markets and many local cooperative and natural food stores, such as PCC Natural Markets in the Seattle area.