Castronovo Chocolate: Latin American Chocolate with an Ecologist's Ethos

Taking a Scientific Approach

In 2012, Denise Castronovo stumbled upon chocolate while getting ready to leave a 15-year career in the geospatial technology and mapping industry and looking for a new business opportunity. Explains Castronovo, “The more I learned about it, the more I got interested. I was drawn by the different flavor notes in chocolate and wondered how I could help create a new pricing model for cacao. At the time, nobody was really doing that in Florida.”

She made her first batch of chocolate in her home kitchen with Dominican cacao beans and “It was the best thing I’d ever tasted,” she says. Her husband Jimmy sold her first bars at a local farmer’s market: the chocolate sold out, prompting Denise to promptly launch Castronovo Chocolate in 2013.

Castronovo’s background in environmental science, ecology, and economics has informed the way she approached cacao sourcing. From the early days, she looked for cacao that would help protect the rainforest and support indigenous communities. This led her to be the first US maker to import cacao beans from the Sierra Nevada Mountain range of Colombia. The 63% dark milk chocolate bar made with the Colombian cacao has since collected multiple awards. “I knew we had something special with this chocolate,” says Denise.

Range of Chocolate

Castronovo chocolate bars — Castronovo bars

Since then, Castronovo Chocolate has expanded her range of bars to feature cacao from several Latin American origins, each with its unique flavor and story, which are transformed into both dark and dark milk chocolate bars.

In the Florida workshop, fudgy Honduran beans become a 60% dark milk chocolate with sea salt reminiscent of salted caramel. Native cacao from the Arhuacos, an indigenous tribe in Colombia, shine in a bold 80% dark chocolate that pairs beautifully with a bold red wine. Flavored bars, such as the 68% mocha dark chocolate and the new 60% dark milk and lavender bar, all use the Tumaco beans from Colombia as their base.

Castronovo Chocolate is also known for other products, such as its white chocolate with lemon and lemon sea salt. While its category is sometimes snubbed by chocolate-lovers, the tropical bar has reached cult level among craft chocolate aficionados. “I don’t like white chocolate but this one’s really different” was a common remark heard at the 2023 DC Chocolate Festival.

Forging Relationships with Farmers

The New England native is proud not only of the cacao she uses, but of the deep relationship she’s built with farmers. In 2019, she joined a cacao sourcing trip to Colombia organized by Uncommon Cacao, a transparent cacao broker, to meet the farmers behind some of her favorite cacao. “It was life-changing” she says. Read more about Uncommon Cacao.

She became familiar with the environmental ethos of the Arhuacos, an indigenous tribe in Colombia, who harvest native cacao on their ancestral land. She thanked Pedro Bolivar, one of the farmers of the Sierra Nevada, for his hard work leading to multi-award-winning bars. She listened to Gustavo and Oberman explain how Tumaco cacao have helped provide an education for their children.

Denise has since stayed in touch with Hernan, the Arhuaco in charge of the Arhuaco fermentation facility. In 2020, he contacted Denise at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. “He reached out to me on WhatsApp from the top of the Sierra Nevada, where the Arhuacos only go for special occasions,” she says. “I was so incredibly touched by this.”

Today, Castronovo Chocolate is the only US maker able to source that ancestral cacao.

What’s next?

Castronovo factory — Denise Castronovo in Peru

As Castronovo celebrates her company’s 10th anniversary this year, she’s contemplating what’s next for her company. For now, she has no plans of leaving the 800-square feet facility where she and her all-female team make their acclaimed bars.

Instead, she is inspired by cacao’s impact on rainforest preservation. She gives the example of La Mosquitia, Honduras, where wild-grown cacao provides an income to the local population. In 2020, she gathered a team of conservationists and impact investors to rescue the cacao fermentation facility in that region and preserve its rainforest. She found the mission very gratifying.

“I’d like to be involved in non-profit work at origin,” says Denise, “so I’m thrilled to now be on the Board of Directors for the Amazon Conservation Team.”

You can follow Denise’s posts on the conversation if rainforest, cacao, and chocolate at @conservationchocolate on Instagram.