Black Jaguar Chocolate, a fine chocolate company located on Cortes, was named a World Finalist at the International Chocolate Awards.

Scott Patterson and Emilie Laskie, owners and founders of Black Jaguar Chocolate, began making chocolate direct from the source where they lived in Nicaragua, and moved to Cortes during the pandemic and brought their business and their connections to the source of the cacao beans with them.

"They really raised the bar this year. They've got international chefs now from all over the world, and they're trying to promote craft chocolate on a global scale, which is going very well."

Their traditional Dark Drinking Chocolate scored 82.5 out of 100, with the competition using the IICCT scoring system, which is tuned to match the scoring scale used in specialty coffee.

Black Jaguar Chocolate's connection to the source of its cacao helps them stand above the rest in the competition. Photo courtesy of Black Jaguar Chocolate

Black Jaguar Chocolate entered in the International Chocolate Awards in 2019 but didn't end up in the finals.

"So in 2019 with our company in Nicaragua, we got a bronze medal for our dark chocolate. But then we entered the Americas competition this year and we were a few percentage points away from winning anything. Then we entered the worlds for our drinking chocolate and didn't really expect much. But then when they put us in with the world finalists, that was pretty cool because we're still a very small micro company, with very simple equipment, but it really speaks for the quality of our cacao that we get."

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