In August 2024, during the Copenhagen Cooking & Food Festival, the Meatpacking District hosted The Nordic Craft Chocolate Festival.
That year, the event brought together a strong lineup of makers including Naive, Aroko, Friis Holm, Herufek, Mellow, Parliament Chocolate, Svenska, Fjåk, and others.
At the time, I was looking for a bean-to-bar chocolate maker offering a full range of Venezuelan origins. So we were especially pleased to hear that Aroko would be coming to Copenhagen.
Aroko is run by Dubraska and Johonny, a Venezuelan couple who moved to Italy about a decade ago. Their work begins on small farms across Venezuela, where they collaborate directly with farmers cultivating rare cacao varieties shaped by their environments. By sourcing micro-lots with full traceability and ensuring fair payment, they maintain a strong connection between origin and craft.
In their workshop in Italy, they roast, grind, and refine each batch with care, combining their Venezuelan roots with Italian craftsmanship to bring out the natural character and individuality of every cacao they work with.
Aroko currently produces four main bars: Porcelana, Chuao, Ocumare, and Sur del Lago.
Porcelana 72%
Porcelana is a Criollo cacao of extraordinary finesse—one of the rarest in the world—grown exclusively in Venezuela’s Sierra de Perijá mountains near Lake Maracaibo. Naturally low in bitterness and high in cocoa butter, it produces chocolate with exceptional smoothness and balance.
This bar offers refined and persistent notes of toasted bread, butter, and dried fruit, lifted by a gentle fruit-like acidity reminiscent of jam.
Chuao 70%
Chuao cacao, grown exclusively around the village of Chuao near the Henry Pittier National Park in Aragua, is often considered the best cacao in the world.
A “Modern Criollo” variety, it combines the purity of Criollo genetics with a delicate acidity that makes the chocolate fresh, fruity, and remarkably persistent.
In 2021, Chuao became the first cacao in the world to receive a certified Designation of Origin: DOCC (Denominación Oficial Cacao de Chuao).
Sur del Lago 71%
Cultivated near Lake Maracaibo, Sur del Lago cacao is a blend of highly aromatic Trinitario and ancestral Criollo varieties such as Porcelana, Bocadillo, and Guasare. The result is a well-balanced chocolate with bright fruit notes, subtle freshness, and refined complexity.
Ocumare 74%
Along Venezuela’s northern coast, Hacienda Las Bromelias grows the rare Ocumare 60, 61, and 67 cacao varieties that define this chocolate. Naturally smooth yet intensely aromatic, it delivers bold herbal notes and a delicate, lingering finish.
Tasting these chocolates is a way of traveling through Venezuela’s cacao regions—each bar revealing a different landscape, climate, and tradition, shaped by the people who work the land and the makers who bring it to life.