Here's a video of Hernán, the Arhuacos leader for cacao who is finishing up his study to become a Mamo, a spiritual leader. He is thanking all of you who contributed to the fundraiser I initiated on Indigenous People's Day in October to raise money to purchase them a 20 lb capacity melanger. Together we raised $3200 and Diamond Chocolate Machines, the manufacturer also contributed. We also purchased for them an EZ Temper machine which will help them make cacao butter silk to facilitate chocolate tempering. In January 2024, we shipped the equipment via DHL and it got stuck in Colombia customs. Our partner, José, who works for Cacao Hunters, made a huge effort to nationalize the machine, work with the customs broker, and fill out a lot of notarized paperwork for him to be able to receive it. Just as the deadline for import was nearing an end, one of our generous customers contributed the funds needed for the customs duties, and the machine was released. As you can see the Arhuacos are very grateful. Hernan's whole family was there to receive the shipment from Jose's vehicle. This is an important contribution to helping the Arhuacos build sustainable livelihoods in their recently acquired territory by the Caribbean sea.

Before making chocolate in the melangers, Hernan met with Mamo Camilo to conduct spiritual work on the machines. I contributed the last element of this work by sharing with them how to operate the machine properly, so the stones do not wear too fast.

On my next visit, I plan to share with them some recipes of chocolate products they can make that will not melt as easily as chocolate bars. There is a market in the Palomino area for their products, including a street-side stand where they already sell mochilas and beaded jewelry. Tourists visit the region to hike and backpack in Tayrona National Park or visit the beaches in Palomino. If you have any of your own favorite cacao recipes for energy bars, baked goods, ceremonial cacao, etc., that you would like to share with them, please post it as a comment or email me at castronovo at outlook.com . I can use my workshop as a test kitchen, and we can compile a recipe book of cacao products they could sell in the nearby markets.

I was informed by a customer that I had conflicting information between our website and our packaging regarding allergens as it pertains to wheat/gluten. I apologize for this and would like to use this blog post as an opportunity to explain the common allergens and how we make our best effort to prevent them from entering the chocolate. 

Nuts: We do not use peanuts. We do not use tree-nuts, with the exception of toasted coconut on occasion to garnish a truffle or put on a chocolate bark as a topping. Coconut should not be present in any of our dark or milk chocolate bars, since it never enters the chocolate grinder or tempering machines. We do not allow peanuts or other tree nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans, pistachio, hazelnut) in our facility - not even for lunch.
We use sacha inchi from Peru (a seed) as a nut alternative in our small 20lb grinder to make a filling for our cuvettes (cups). Sacha Inchi never enters our tempering machines or our large-scale chocolate grinders that we use to make dark and milk chocolate. The 20 lb chocolate grinder that is used for making sacha inchi chocolate is completely cleaned out before another small or test batch of chocolate is made in the same machine.

Milk: We use dairy milk powder and liquid milk in our facility. We reserve one of our large-scale grinders for milk chocolate production. This grinder is located right next to our dark chocolate grinder. Both grinders have a lid on them that leaves about a 3-inch vertical opening between the lid and the drum that holds the chocolate. We do make an effort to separate dark and milk chocolate production by dedicating a tempering machine only to dark chocolate and a grinder only to dark chocolate. Milk powder is a fine particle that could get into the air and circulate in our facility's HVAC system leaving trace amounts of milk even in our dark chocolate. During the daytime while we are working, our chocolate tempering machines have a continuous flow of chocolate that could possibly absorb a fine airborne particle. If you are severely allergic to milk, please refrain from eating our milk or dark chocolate. 

Soy: We do not use soy in our facility. All of our chocolate is soy-free.

Wheat/gluten: We do use wheat flour in our facility. About two times per week we make a baked item such as cookies or brownies that use flour containing gluten. Flour is a fine particle that could possibly get into the air and circulate in our facility's HVAC system, leaving trace amounts of wheat/gluten in our dark or milk chocolate. We make efforts to minimize this exposure by covering our mixer with a cloth while mixing cookie dough and by covering our chocolate grinders with lids. The lid on the chocolate grinder leaves about a 3 inch vertical opening between the lid and drum that holds the chocolate. During the daytime while we are working, our chocolate tempering machines have a continuous flow of chocolate that could possibly absorb a fine airborne particle. If you are severely allergic to wheat or gluten, please refrain from eating our dark or milk chocolate. 

Eggs: We do use eggs in our facility about two times per week when we make a baked item such as cookies or brownies. Eggs should never contaminate the chocolate, however. If an egg spilled into the chocolate grinder or tempering machine, we would discard all of the chocolate that the egg contaminated. 

I hope this clarifies the allergen statements made on our packaging and item descriptions. I take food allergens very seriously and want to ensure you have the information you need to make the proper decision for yourself regarding whether our chocolate is appropriate for you to consume.

​I started making chocolate using cacao from La Mosquitia, Honduras back in 2014. At first, I admired its rich chocolate flavor with very little bitterness and the fact that it came from one of the largest remaining swaths of intact tropical rainforest in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve. I could taste the earthiness of the jungle in the raw cocoa bean I first tasted and could only imagine its surroundings. In 2014, I knew about an undiscovered and legendary “Lost City of the Monkey God” located somewhere at a secret location in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, not far from where the cacao was harvested. The initial discovery was made using LIDAR technology, which uses a laser beam to target objects from an airplane. LIDAR enables you to make a 3D representation of an object on the ground. I was quite familiar with this technology from my former career in geospatial mapping and was amazed at this new application of LIDAR to map the jungle floor to make an archeological discovery.

My husband and I were so intrigued by the notion of archeological remains soon-to-be-discovered from a past civilization hidden in this pristine rainforest, so we named our chocolate bar after the Lost City. We continued to follow the discoveries as they were unveiled in 2015, followed by an article in the New Yorker magazine, a best-selling book “The Lost City of the Monkey God” by Douglas Preston, and a film entitled, "The Lost City of the Monkey God" produced by Benenson Productions. 

In 2018, I was shocked to be handed the phone at the chocolate factory to find Steve Elkins on the other end! Steve Elkins discovered our Lost City, Honduras chocolate and came to visit us in Florida. Unexpected moments like this make life so exciting. We spoke about how the discovery of the Lost City, known now as “Cuidad Blanca”, opened a pandora’s box for the need to protect the archeological site from looting and the rainforest around it, which is increasingly being deforested each time they return. Steve recognized the importance of building an industry around cacao in the region, because it can exist in tandem with the conservation of the natural patrimony of Honduras. 

​On October 31st (Halloween night) at 8pm ET/PT the Discovery Science Channel will premiere the “Lost City of the Monkey God” movie. I collaborated with Steve Elkins to create a gift box of 4 chocolate artifacts from the Cuidad Blanca for you to read about and taste while viewing the movie. They can be purchased online here or at our retail location in Stuart, FL.
#LostCityOfTheMonkeyGod

This Thursday, April 22, marks 51 years since the onset of the modern day environmental movement where a public consciousness first emerged about the state of our planet. Last year on the 50th anniversary with the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic, it became obvious that the Earth's health clearly is out of balance. This time it's impact rapidly spread around the globe in a matter of 3 to 6 months and affected us all directly. Suddenly it became clear to me how interconnected we all are, and how we can use this to our advantage to heal the Earth. 

In high school I made a commitment to devote my life's work to protecting the environment and developing sustainable solutions. The picture on my left shows me at my high school graduation in 1992 with my message to the world on my cap. I went on to college to study Environmental Science (B.A.), Anthropology, Economics (M.S.), Ecology (PhD coursework), Sustainable Development in Costa Rica, and Geospatial Technology (GISP).

I founded my first company, Mapping Sustainability in 2004 where I used geospatial technology to work on environmental projects. As I look back, the project I am most proud of was our work to map the urban forest cover and conduct a street tree inventory for the city of Boston back in 2005. Our geospatial analysis enabled the City of Boston to assess the existing tree canopy, establish goals for urban forest cover to mitigate against climate change, and identify neighborhoods most in need of forest cover to ensure environmental justice. Mayor Menino announced ambitious goals to establish Boston's first Urban Forest Plan at an event with the first Environmentalist Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2004, Dr. Wangari Maathai, who earned her accolades for the Green Belt Movement that is acting to empower women to reforest Africa by planting trees. My husband Jim and I had the honor of meeting her and sharing with her our success in using geospatial technology to map trees. We gave her the idea to utilize the same technology to show her progress planting trees in Kenya and identify deforested areas, because accountability was necessary for her to secure funding to push her reforestation efforts forward. I never would have imagined that this one event of us coming together, sharing knowledge and expertise could have such a positive effect. Only two years later in 2007, Dr. Maathai was the keynote speaker at the leading Geospatial Technology annual conference showing how the technology has allowed them to convince government leaders to support their reforestation work.

This year's Earth Day theme is, "Together, we can Restore our Earth" (Earthday.org). Right now, I find hope in the meaning of togetherness. We need each other to share knowledge to solve the complex global environmental problems that lie ahead of us and to cooperate to combat COVID-19.

This upcoming week I hope to follow up with blog posts and Instagram posts about how Castronovo Chocolate helps restore ecosystems and protect the environment by looking in depth at some of our different origin chocolates. I believe we can mobilize to "Act Now" and build a sustainable future for not only ourselves but also for the natural world. In the words of my hero, Jane Goodall, "Together we can, together we will!"

​Happy Earth Day everyone, let's have an inspiring week and celebrate with chocolate!

Valentine's Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. What is better than a day to celebrate love, kindness, and give small gifts to uplift someone else's heart. This year we poured our love into the creation of a beautiful hand-decorated gift set of heart bonbons with chocolates we make from Latin American beans. Each heart has its own story that we'd like to share with you through this blog and our instagram.

The cacao for the "Arhuacos" bonbon comes from "the hart of the world," the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. It is a special place where all of the biomes on Earth exist along an elevation gradient form the Caribbean Sea to the snowy glacial peaks all within in a region smaller than the size of Massachusetts. Essentially, it is a microcosm of planet Earth. Its caretakers are the Arhuacos, an indigenous group of people who are descendants of the Tairona, a pre-Columbian people present in the area as early as 200 BC. The Arhuacos harvest the same stock of cacao that their ancestors used to drink in ceremony. 

We are very fortunate to have this ancestral cacao from the Arhuacos, since they have not been harvesting this year due to COVID-19. Instead they have focused their time on ceremony to bring the Earth back in balance. I was selected as one of the lucky partners to have some of the remaining lot of this cacao, because of my long-term commitment to working with Colombian cacao to help earn it recognition worldwide for its high quality. 

Our Valentine, "Arhuacos" bonbon has a ganache created with our Arhuacos dark milk chocolate and a surprise crunch in each. Its outside decoration symbolizes the gold treasures the Tairona buried on the mountain to balance Mother Earth. The turquoise design symbolizes the mochilla bags that the Arhuacos weave and wear over their shoulder. When I met the Arhuacos, I promised to deliver their message to you through the chocolate: "Be mindful of how much we change nature. The wind, water, soil, and this special cacao are all gifts from Mother Earth that support humanity." This Valentine's day, let's spread some love to others we care about, to strangers by cooperating to contain the virus,  and most importantly to Mother Earth who takes care of us.

These two customers touched our hearts the most this Christmas season. I didn’t ask their entire story to respect their privacy, but their act of kindness goes beyond words. They came to our store looking for a special gift to give all of the emergency room workers at our local hospital. Particularly, this year we know the nurses and doctors are the heroes of 2020, and we are so happy this couple chose Castronovo Chocolate to gift to them. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! 
​2020 certainly is turning out to be a year like none other. During these uncertain times I find myself more contemplative about what truly is important to me. I created this blog as a platform to share with you my personal stories and inspiration. 

Since this is my first post, I'd first of all like to thank all of you who have supported us along our 8-year journey in bean-to-bar chocolate making. I have many lofty goals for why I started this business and how I'd like to contribute to the conservation of biological diversity and cultural heritage. However, a lot of my motivation for continuing to make chocolate comes from you.

Many of you thank us by saying how lucky you are to have Castronovo Chocolate Factory in your small coastal town of Stuart, Florida. Even though I am often busy with chocolate production, your visits do not go unnoticed. It brings me joy to see you bring your relatives or friends from out-of-town to our shop before they leave for back home. I am also extremely grateful that our fine chocolate is shared at your special holiday tables from Thanksgiving all the way through Father's Day, or given to your loved ones as special gifts. Some of you are even a little embarrassed to admit that you stow it away for self-care during those moments when you need personal uplift. However, you should never be ashamed to take care of yourself, because finding our own personal happiness is exactly what you need to be able to help others. I am proud that my team and I make such a special chocolate that brings you so much joy... and me as well. Happy Thanksgiving! - Denise
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