Ceremonial cacao

A cacao paste melts in water,
then the whisk raises the foam.

We like to say “ritual” for this time given over to preparation. At MOOJO, the word “ceremonial” ties the cup to specific choices: the price paid, the place, the variety and the care given to the cacao.

To read cacao again, before chocolate.

Why cacao is not only chocolate

Criteria

What the word requires

The word adds nothing to the substance. It only sets requirements, and we hold to six.

A fair price for the women and men who grow, harvest and prepare the cacao.

Terroirs that can be named: a valley, a community, sometimes a single garden.

Varieties chosen for the range of flavours they carry within them.

Rigorous work after the harvest, from fermentation to drying, followed batch by batch.

A gentler journey, under sail, when possible.

Gentle processing, in our workshop, that translates the substance without rewriting it.

Without these, the word no longer commits to anything. It dresses things up, it reassures, and the cacao falls silent.

The gesture

The matter opens in water

Ceremonial cacao needs no staging. It opens up in water, at a moderate heat, through a slow gesture: grating or breaking, stirring in, emulsifying until substance and water are no longer two. The foam is not decoration. It carries the aroma and changes the mouthfeel.

This gesture can accompany a silence, a shared moment, a piece of work. It can remain solitary. It needs no accessories, nor a language borrowed from traditions that are not ours. The communities that have carried cacao as a drink, an offering, a presence, have their own gestures. We claim none of them. We take care of a substance, and of the respect it asks for.

The ritual, if there is one, begins long before the cup: in the soil, the pod, the pulp, the days of fermentation, the fire, the grinding. The cup is the moment when this whole sequence becomes perceptible. If the terroir can still be read in the dry matter, it will be read in the water too, as long as it is not masked by sugar or spice.

Taste it plain first. Then, if you like, add. The substance is enough, when it is true.

Cacao is wider than chocolate.

Volume 1, MOOJO

In the shop

Ritual cacao collection

100% cacao, as bars, pieces or beans

See the collection

Clarifying

Three misunderstandings

A substance,
not a promise

A named origin, a composition you can read, and the gestures of its making, which we can tell you about.

Respecting traditions

Traditions belong to the communities who carry them. Our encounters nourish the attention we give to cacao.

Tasting an origin

With an origin you can read, pure cacao makes room for the nuances of the place and of the work. A first sip, then the scent that stays.