Hands on chocolate making class. From bean to bar, Puerto Viejo

Chocolate doesn't begin as a bar. It begins as the fruit of a tropical tree.

Step inside our working bean-to-bar chocolate house in Puerto Viejo and discover how locally grown Caribbean cacao becomes exceptional chocolate. You'll make your own chocolate from cacao beans using the same small-batch methods we use every day.

Unlike plantation tours or demonstrations, this is a fully hands-on experience. Every participant completes every stage of the chocolate-making process, from bean to finished bar.

Your experience begins beside living cacao trees, where you'll discover how this remarkable tropical fruit grows, what shapes its flavour, and why it has fascinated people for thousands of years. Then you'll step into our workshop to roast, crack, winnow, grind, refine, temper and mould your own chocolate while learning how each step transforms flavour, texture and aroma.

Along the way, you'll taste cacao in different forms, ask as many questions as you like, and discover why chocolate is the record of everything that happened to the fruit before it became a bar.

You'll leave with a chocolate bar you've made yourself—and, we hope, a completely different way of looking at chocolate.