The process
A Bean-To-Bar Chocolate
Oialla follows the cocoa from harvest to the finished chocolate. We control every step of the supply chain and work closely together with our partners in Bolivia. Bean-to-bar production gives Oialla the means to create a pristine chocolate with a pure and unpresidented flavour.
When Oialla started in 2010 few paid attention to bean-to-bar or single origin chocolate. Today ambitious chocolatiers and companies have realised the potential of knowing where the cocoa comes from. Using wild cocoa gives us the oppurtunity to create an exclusive chocolate while caring for the environment and the indigenous people of Baures, Bolivia.
The freshly picked cocoa beans are immediatly fermented in baskets for three days, then dried on suspended nylon tarp. When the cocoa is perfectly dry, it is shipped to Scandinavia, where it is roasted, crushed, conched and tempered.
We have put together a beautiful booklet that tells the story of how Oialla is made – from bean to bar.
Oialla is wild
Before Oialla began harvesting the beans; the cocoa grew, ripened and rotted in the Bolivian jungle. No one really paid it any attention and only wildlife got to enjoy the sweet, white cocoa flesh. That all changed when the chocolatier Rasmus Bo Bojesen discovered the beans during a trip to Bolivia. He immediately recognized the enormous quality and potential. And through a partnership with a local cocoa company and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Denmark, they started making organic Beniano chocolate. This they named Oialla.
The home of the Beniano
Bolivia lies in the middle of South America, completely landlocked. The country is divided into two extremes – the highlands of the Andes and the lowland jungle.
The northern province, Beni, lies partly in Amazonia. Beni is divided into eigth counties (Mamoré, Vaca Diaz, Itenez, Moxos, Maruam, Yacuma, Ballivian and Cercado) and contains the capital city, Trinidad. It is in Itenez that the cocoa trees grow wild. Itenez is divided into three municipalities: Baures, Huacaraje and Magdalena.
Baures is the largest and contains 67 islets in the dry season, which become small islands in the rainy season. This is where the cocoa trees can be found growing wild. So far we have visited six islands – San Carlos, San Pedrito, Santa Maria, San Lucius, Veremos and Caricuara. Currently around ten of the islets are being harvested.
The Amazon jungle is situated in Bolivia’s north-eastern province of Beni where the wild cocoa trees are growing. To travel to Beni from Scandinavia you have to take five flights, spend one day of canoeing on the beautiful dark jungle river with jumping pink dolphins, howling monkeys and richly coloured parrots, then walk fifteen kilometers through mud to reach the trees that grow on islets in the mangrove swamp.
OIALLA IS
- Oialla is quality chocolate. 100%, 78%, 72%, 46%
- Oialla is organic
- Oialla is based only on Beniano beans
- Oialla is rare
- Oialla has grown wild in the jungle. No cultivation, no fertilization, no treating with herbicides, and no cutting in the forest Oialla is healthy – only cocoa and raw cane sugar, no additives Oialla is an award winning artisan chocolate. Silver medal from The Academy of Chocolate
- Oialla is made by one of the leading chocolatiers in the world, Rasmus Bo Bojesen. Producing high quality, organic chocolate is a challenge mastered only by a very few producers in the world Oialla is a bean-to bar product – micro-manufacturers committed to excellence
- Oialla is made with purpose and care. Care for the taste, care for the vulnerable trees, care for the jungle society in Bolivia. It is natural, ethical, pure, sustainable and traceable
- Oialla is chocolate with value – local pickers and production workers are being trained, the harvest is done with respect for the old trees dating back to the Incas, the fermentation, drying and sorting is being done in order the get the best material for chocolate Oialla is sophisticated packaging and communication
Awards won by Oialla
