Letterpress Bachelor’s Hall Jamaica Dark Chocolate Bar

If your tastebuds are requesting (or demanding!) a chocolate so remarkably delicious that it qualifies as edible poetry, look no further. In this Letterpress Bachelor’s Hall Jamaica 70% Dark Chocolate Bar you’ll encounter a rich, deep, fudgy, soul-satisfying devil’s food chocolate cake flavor with hints of toasted nuts, mocha, and the softest whisper of spice. Smooth, complex, layered and divine, for the love of chocolate, please give this bar a try! It will become your new favorite. Honestly, it’s my favorite expression of Bachelor’s Hall beans.

The outstanding beans for this bar hail from Bachelor's Hall Estate in Saint Thomas, Jamaica, which  is a 300-acre farm owned and operated by Desmond Jadusingh. The land in Saint Thomas is fertile with natural springs and four small rivers running through the area. It is situated just below the Blue Mountains of St. Thomas Parish on the southeastern end of Jamaica. Once upon a time, Bachelor's Hall Estate grew coconuts, bananas and sugar cane, but since Desmond bought the land in 2002, he has focused mainly on growing and harvesting Trinitario cacao beans. This fine flavor cacao is extremely delicate and nuanced, costing four times as much as commodity cacao. Some chocolate makers have described Desmond as part farmer, part philosopher and part madman, which makes him spectacularly qualified to grow cacao of this caliber.

In 2014, David Menkes of Letterpress was a student of chocolate making  who tasted these Bachelor’s Hall beans and believed they were best he’d ever had. Though passionately in love with the beans and excited to make chocolate bars from them, he decided to hold off until he felt he had the appropriately high skill level to match their quality. It took five years, but David finally believed he was ready, and the judges at the awards agree.

• Gold Winner 2021 Academy of Chocolate Awards
• Silver Winner 2020 Academy of Chocolate Awards

David and Corey Menkes, the chocolate wizards behind Letterpress, were once close friends in high school. They fell in love and got married in 2010. On a trip to St. Lucia shortly after their wedding they tasted the sweet pulp from cacao pods, saw cacao fermenting for the first time, and got bitten by the chocolate-making bug.

By 2013, the couple was running a bean-to-bar chocolate blog called Little Brown Squares where they exclusively reviewed craft bars. In 2014, David took a cacao bootcamp class hosted by Madre Chocolate in Oahu, Hawaii. There, David learned not only how to grow and cultivate cacao trees, but also how to ferment and dry cacao, taking the chocolate-making process all the way through to the finished bar.

 Upon returning home to LA, he began purchasing small quantities of cacao beans to start making his own chocolate in the kitchen. After some practice, his chocolate was so delicious that his coworkers at DreamWorks Animation started placing orders. By 2016, David and Corey's tiny apartment was overrun with chocolate making equipment and they needed to find a larger home for it. A shared kitchen conveniently located just down the road fit the bill, and after renting space there, they eventually purchased it in 2017. In 2018 they expanded beyond the kitchen, taking over the entire location and renovating the retail area. They hosted a grand opening in 2018 and started offering factory tours in 2019 to an overwhelming response. Keep your eyes on this amazing company. They are young and brilliant chocolate makers.