[Spanish below]

The International Chocolate Awards is pleased to announce the Winners of the 2024 Colombian Cacao Country Support Competition, the 3er. Concurso Nacional de Chocolate de Origen Colombiano, which was judged remotely in Colombia and also by our international pool of judges and Grand Jury during September-October 2024.

The winners of the 3er Concurso Nacional de Chocolate de Origen Colombiano were announced last Sunday night at a ceremony held at the venue of the 11o Salón de Cacao y Chocolate de Colombia in Arauquita, the largest producer of fine cacao in the State of Arauca.

Excitement and anticipation had been building for the three days of the festival with people coming from all over Colombia and beyond to attend conferences, classes, tastings, and to buy fine chocolate and bonbons as well as local crafts.

With a full house in attendance to hear the results of two competitions run by the International Chocolate Awards and prizes for best cacao pods in the region and best technique in cutting cacao pods, a storm hit Arauquita and we were left without electricity. Determined to continue with our prize ceremony, we looked for candles and set the stage.

One of our judges, Rafael Carrillo, who is a cacao farmer as well as a singer and musician, started playing his four-string guitar (cuatro) and sang to the audience. Everyone joined in singing the soulful music of the plains of Arauca. Thankfully, just before the main announcements, power returned and we were able to read the list of winners and have them on stage to receive their certificates.*

Judges

The judging panel included our regular judges from Colombia, along with many of our IICCT alumni and other specialists from the local area and members of our international Grand Jury panel.

All judging was anonymized, including the Grand Jury final session, where Golds, Silver and Bronze prizes were awarded by private voting according to the Grand Jury rules.

Grand Jury finalists can be viewed here.

Highlights of the competition

Notable among winners was the company Cacao Hunters in the large-batch category with bars made with cacao sourced from the local farm Villa Gaby in Arauquita and a limited edition with cacao from a social project in the north of the Cauca region. In the high percentage category, they obtained a silver with Hachimitsu 85% a bar with no added cacao butter or lecithin that captures the range of fine genetics growing at the Villa Gaby farm in Arauquita.

In the micro-batch dark chocolate category, Mónica Gómez and her husband Rafael Harb of Carlota Chocolat, a small company in Bucaramanga, Santander, received a Gold for a 70% bar featuring cacao sourced from a single farmer in the emerging Meta region, the same Gold winner in the cacao competition Grano de Oro that evening.

This competition celebrates the cacao-growing regions of Arauca, Antioquia, Cauca, Huila, Meta, Santander and makers from all over Colombia who source cacao responsibly and value traceability.

Notable among winners were chocolates flavored with fruits from the humid Pacific coast like borojo, which received a special prize for biome and traditional culinary preparations like the corn cake (arepa de maíz pelao) from Santander for a crunchy texture which won the brand Maluwa a bronze and special prize for gastronomy.

Cacao is the foundation of local economies, of social and cultural change in Colombia, and it’s the theme of the grass roots yearly Salon del Cacao y Chocolate de Colombia in the municipality of Arauquita by the Arauca River, the border with beleaguered Venezuela. When the festival started eleven years ago, it was held under a tent, a few steps from the place where prized bulls and cows were being kept for a concurrent livestock fair. The tent became a handsome building and the Salon has grown to host professional conferences on cacao and chocolate, performances by artists and musicians, important competitions, the sensory evaluation classes of the International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting, and now in its third year, the 3er Concurso Nacional de Chocolate de Origen Colombiano, organized jointly with the International Chocolate Awards.

*This Colombian Cacao Country Support Competition is not part of the International Chocolate Awards World Final series.