2024 Academy of Chocolate Awards

We are happy to share that our 50% Milk Chocolate bar with beans from Maya Mountain Belize won a Gold Award at the 2024 Academy of Chocolate Awards in the UK

Since 2010, Maya Mountain Cacao has been a driving force in putting Belize on the craft chocolate map. As the country’s first exporter of centrally fermented cacao, they’ve helped transform local cacao into a globally recognized product. Today, they work with over 400 smallholder Maya farming families—primarily Q’eqchi’ and Mopan—in southern Belize. These communities have grown cacao for generations, and now their beans are part of a centralized fermentation and sun-drying process that brings out truly unique flavors.

Maya Mountain’s all-local team handles the entire post-harvest process, ensuring quality, transparency, and strong relationships with growers. Their cacao grows in a rich landscape of rainforest, limestone hills, and diverse agroforestry—intercropped with trees like banana, avocado, and coconut. This is more than chocolate. It’s community, tradition, and terroir—all in every bean.

Our 50% Milk Chocolate bar is the little sister to our award winning 70% Maya Mountain. Our Milk Chocolate is indeed creamy without being overly sweet. The bar offers a unique, fruity flavour profile rarely found in milk chocolate, with subtle notes of grapes, plums, and honey. The flavour complexity includes cereal, malt, and peanut notes, providing a well-balanced and pleasant tasting experience.