[News Boquete] Chocolate Begins as Fruit

Read the Newsroom Panama article and join us for our next hands-on workshop

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Hello News Boquete, I've known this since I planted my first cacao trees, but something about it has deepened recently as I watch guests move through the cacao grove during our workshops and farm tours: Chocolate begins as fruit. Not as powder, candy, or a finished bar, but as something alive, growing beneath the trees, surrounded by birdsong, humidity, fermentation, and seasonality. Earlier today, I reread the newest article I wrote for Newsroom Panama after seeing it published online, and I realized the piece is not really about chocolate at all. It is about the moment people begin seeing chocolate differently. The article follows one of our recent workshops from the cacao grove through fermentation, roasting over fire, hand peeling cacao beans, stone grinding, and tempering chocolate by hand. But underneath all of it is something more grounded, the experience of reconnecting chocolate to the land that produced it. https://newsroompanama.com/2026/05/18/the-moment-people-realize-chocolate-begins-as-fruit/ Because so many people asked after our last gathering, we will be offering another hands-on chocolate workshop here on the farm on Sunday, June 14 from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. We will keep the gathering intentionally small, as always, so there is time to move slowly, ask questions, work with the cacao by hand, and spend time together around the table. If you would like the workshop details, simply reply to this email with WORKSHOP and I’ll send everything over. Warmly, Lyn Bishop  Founder, Quetzal Cacao P.S. One of my favorite moments is watching people notice cacao flowers for the first time. They are so tiny that many guests walk past them at first, and then suddenly stop and lean closer to the trunk once they finally see them. Lyn Bishop Correo 0415 00085 La Concepcion Bugaba Chiriquí 0145 Panama - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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