El Cacaotal Chocolate Tasting

****Updated address on May 29, 2021**** El Cacaotal has always been located on Jirón Colina, but it’s been in three locations. Currently, the address is Jirón Colina 111.

Chocolate tasting class? For as little as 60 soles (20 bucks) or 120 soles (40 bucks), you can learn all about chocolate, where it’s grown in Peru, where it comes from, how to taste it, what it should sound like, snap like, smell like, and so on… but, no fear, the class is not intimidating. AJ is clearly an expert (she really is — see below), but she is so warm and friendly that you hardly feel like you are sitting on a school bench.

AJ is an American anthropologist who did her graduate degree in chocolate!  Then she opened up a shop to share the knowledge and help Peru’s chocolate field. Her shop is called El Cacaotal (cocoa field) and it’s decorated with dried cacao tree leaves and everything chocolate (or items in support of non-chocolate small entrepreneurs). The shop is located on Jirón Colina 111 in Barranco (two streets west from the Metro grocery store on Grau, down the street from a yellow corner building).

AJ’s chocolate tasting classes can be in English or Spanish and at the end, you will be in situ to buy chocolate! The chocolate is sustainable small batch delicious healthy dark chocolate, but you can ignore that if you want and just enjoy the delicious varieties of chocolate from all over Peru.

I emailed to set up a class for seven of us (she can fit up to ten in a class). Her email is: elcacaotalperu@gmail.com. Make it a thing you do when you visit Lima.

Read a much more thorough article about her on Living in Peru…

I’ll be too busy eating chocolate, because, did I mention that I don’t even really like chocolate? So I’ll be trying to find one that I really do like… And not just the world champion from last year… I’ll give them all a try! Even the (healthy, sigh) spreadable version.

Address: Jirón Colina 111 in Barranco

Email: elcacaotalperu@gmail.com