— Commited to shining a great light on its Mesoamerican roots, Vai is in for sharing the love of cacao!
It’s a story of patience, determination, true friendships and respect of the land and what it gives us.
Vai Cacao is an Italy-based brand, their office and facility are located in Olbia, Sardinia.
The founders, Elisa & Juan-Rafael, debuted their venture in 2016 in quite an interesting way.
" This coherence comes from creating an empowering local dynamic, relying on direct-trade that comes with friendships, benefiting from the experience of each link involved in order to be able to promote a pure and sincere product. "
N.B. : This article contains an affiliate link and a 10% discount code available for a first purchase. These advantages are here to compensate the time and work we put in our project. Yet, we’re dedicated to staying objective in our analyses.
Enjoy them if you want to try new cacaos while supporting us 🙂
Sitting at the source of cacao
It’s already getting intriguing for the cacao afficionados out there, as you may know that this region of the world was home of many ancient civilizations such as Mayas or Toltecs. Those people valued cacao very highly, in a way that our westerner’s mind is today unable to properly translate.
It remains to this day the home of native communities such as Nahua, Pipil or Lencas, whom inherited priceless knowledge and traditions from the cultures mentionned above.
An indelible imprint that influences in the most beautiful way Vai’s story, that we’re about to tell.
Everything starts from La Finca Cuyancùa, Juan-Ra’s family’s farm located in Izalco. Originally focusing on coffee, Juan-Ra’s dad started to diversify to cacao in the early 2000’s while in the meantime creating a cooperative of cacao producers. This endeavor was then followed by the building of a post-harvest facility, ensuring all the freshly harvested beans from the cooperative high quality and consistent fermentation and drying practices.
A certainly fertile ground for Elisa and Juan-Ra’s ambition.
In 2012, Vai Cacao was still only an idea, one of sharing fine quality Salvadoran cacao with the world. A few years later in 2016, they were able to offer fine cacao nibs (crunched beans that’ve followed the fermentation-drying-roasting tunnel) in Sardinia, where Elisa is from. Those years gave them time to familiarize with chocolate making processes while expanding their knowledge of fine cacao.
Vai's thoughtful growth
All this background built-up in an unmistakably coherent diversification as by the end of 2018, they were able to offer ceremonial cacao and bean-to-bar chocolate followed in early 2019.
Artisanally and insightfully made by the two of them, in their own manufactory in Olbia, with their own beans coming from Cuyancùa. A textbook tree-to-bar process, and a vertically integrated supply chain that calls for inspiration.
On their way to set up such project, they built strong bonds and friendships with like-minded farmers and cooperatives in Mesoamerica.
It allowed them to quickly broaden their cacao range.
Today they offer not less than 7 different single origins, including 4 of them coming from single farms in El Salvador.
They then established not only one of the biggest range on the market of ceremonial cacao, but also the biggest Mesoamerican imprinted cacao choice, as the Salvadorans are sitting besides Nicaraguan, Guatemalan and Costa Rican cacaos, all three coming from cooperatives of smallholder farms.
Making a change on both ends of the chain
With all that being said, it’s clear to us that the whole project is infused with coherence which can be felt, down to the very end of the chain, when only looking at the end products.
This comes from creating an empowering local dynamic, relying on direct-trade that comes with friendships, benefiting from the experience of each link involved in order to be able to promote a pure and sincere product.
This purity is obviously kept alive when comes the time for Elisa and Juan-Ra to transform their much loved beans into ceremonial cacao.
A virtual tour of their manufactory immersed us in their reality. One of an organically growing brand transforming beans into paste through a gentle and thoughtful process. Each step perfomed is kept minimal. From roasting at low temperatures to slowly and « shortly » stone-grinding. No conching, no tempering here, the minimum is done with the aim to preserve the paste from being refined too much in order to preserve what it has to offer.
What's next
We can only be grateful for the connection we established with Elisa and Juan-Ra, who did not hesitate for a second before jumping into our project and greeting us with their whole range of cacao. Their support and involvement has already been rich and helpful and we’re happy to benefit from all the hard work they’ve put in to be able to put such a big part of Mesoamerica on the ceremonial cacao map. Their determination and will to act for a change, down at the farms they work with, are a great source of inspiration.
Now it’s time to explore and try to get familiar with each of them in order to express best their flavor profiles, as well as the effects they procure. We’ll gather our feedbacks in a series of articles, preceding Elisa & Juan-Ra’s interview, in the hope to share beautiful insights.
If you’d like to experiment with Vai’s extensive range of cacaos, enjoy 10% off your first order with our code : CACAOINSIGHTS.
And as a final word, an abstract of Vai Cacao’s mission, in their own terms :
« We believe we can help building a better world and overcome the trade models that unfortunately marked the previous centuries, especially with regard to cacao treated as a commodity and not as a food specialty. We want to break the classic trading methods that have only benefited countries with stronger economies, leaving behind those who produce this extraordinary tropical fruit. To do this, however, we need to help people understand about this world. »
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