Harvest 2025 · Finca La Esperanza
Solum 72
One farm. One fermentation. One roast. No blend, no vanilla, no lecithin.
The dry season
In 2019 Ina Solberg spent three months with cacao families in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. She saw pods opened the same day — and beans from different farms poured into the same sack before they left the coast. The flavour evened out. The place disappeared.
Three years later she started Solum with one rule: the lot must be able to point back. 2025 is the fourth bar. The year was dry. Fewer pods, thicker pulp, more acidity in the bean. Cooperativa Río Claro offered the whole harvest from Finca La Esperanza. Solum took it. Nothing was blended with the year before.
The bar weighs 70 grams. It is made to be eaten slowly, and so you can say where the cacao stood.
Origin
Finca La Esperanza sits in Magdalena, on the slope below the Sierra Nevada. The Restrepo family planted Trinitario here in the 1990s. Shade from native trees. No irrigation — the harvest follows the rain.
Pods are cut when they turn yellow towards orange, not by the calendar. They are opened the same day, on the farm. Pulp and beans go into cedar boxes marked with date and row. Cooperativa Río Claro weighs, dries and sends the lot with the farm name. Solum roasts it without blending in other years or other fincas.
Fermentation
47 °C peak in the box, day four
Six days in cedar boxes, covered. The mass is turned twice a day. Temperature rises on its own. On day four it reaches 47 °C in the core. The fruit sugars are broken down, and the bean has taken on the fruity acidity the bar carries.
Then eight days on beds in the sun, until moisture sits around 7%. Too fast, and the shell splits. Too slow, and mould takes over. This year drying took longer than usual — the air was dry, the nights cold.
Roast
118–138 °C drum, 18 minutes, nib 132 °C
Fifteen kilos in the drum. First twelve minutes at 118 °C, dry, until the shell lifts. Then six minutes towards 138 °C. The nib is at 132 °C when we empty. Above that it turns to smoke. Below that the fruit stays raw.
The profile is written for this lot, not for a house “standard 72%”. Tasted three times along the way. One batch was roasted again. It did not go into the bar.
In the bar
Three things. The cacao mass and the cocoa butter come from the same beans. The cane sugar is there to carry the acidity, not to cover it.
After the roast
The beans are cracked and winnowed. The mass runs on stone for forty hours, then is conched for 48 hours at 55 °C. Tempered at 31.5 °C, in three-kilo batches. The bars rest three days before they are wrapped.
No vanilla. No lecithin. No “natural flavour”.
How it tastes
First dried cherry and cacao. Then toasted nut. The finish is long, warm, with an acidity that does not bite — it comes from the fermentation, not from fruit added afterwards.
Eat it in small pieces. It is 70 grams because that is enough.
Awards
Gold International Chocolate Awards, Europe · 2025
Silver International Chocolate Awards, World · 2025