Las Ubas Honduras | 100% Ritual Drinking Cacao

Ingredients:  100% heritage trinitario cacao

Notes:  Fig, walnut, raisin, plum, spice

The Farm Story:
Finca Las Ubas – Evelio Martínez Guerrero
Evelio Martínez Guerrero cultivates excellent trinitario cacao in La Unión de Capapan, Catacamas, Olancho, Honduras. Originally from Comayagua, he has lived in this community for 26 years with his wife, Seferina Melgar Sosa, a native of Olancho. They have two adult children, Merlín Evelio (23) and Nurian Daniela (21).

Evelio manages a diversified livelihood typical of smallholders in Olancho. His family farm, Finca Las Ubas, is located at approximately 500 meters above sea level. The property includes 20 manzanas of pastureland with cattle, subsistence plantings of maize and beans, and half a manzana (about 0.35 hectares) of cacao. The cacao plot consists of roughly 300 trees of the Trinitario variety.

The family keeps busy. In addition to farming, Evelio works as a mason and builder, and he and his family run a small business selling secondhand clothing from their home in the central part of their community. The family is well known locally for their hospitality; they prefer not to keep dogs to make their home more welcoming to visitors.

Outside of work, Evelio has a deep appreciation for music, especially English-language classics from artists like the Bee Gees, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Chicago, and Bob Marley. Though he regrets not having learned to play an instrument, he continues to value music as an important part of community and church life.

A Note on Allergens and Additives:
We stone grind our traceable cacao in machines also making delicious things from tree nuts. Apart from that, its very simple. We do not use emulsifiers like lecithins, or other additives like vanilla.

We never add sugar to Ritual Drinking Cacaos. They're 100% cacao, light roasted, cracked, air winnowed, and minimally processed on stone grinders to maintain the highest integrity from farm to cup. Every step we take with conscious love. When we drink our morning cacao, we sometimes like it with a small glob of honey and a tiny pinch of salt. Find out more on our recipes page!

How we sip it

Numinous ritual drinking cacao is 100% pure, and we enjoy sipping it mixed in hot water alone, but there are no rules. A spoonful of local raw honey or maple syrup beautifully complements cacao’s natural richness.

Dosage is personal, but here are our gram weight guidelines for enjoying cacao in six ounces of hot water:

 - 15g: A gentle dose. For those sensitive to stimulants or new to cacao, we recommend playing with just a little at first.
 - 20-30g: Ideal for a radically enlivening daily morning ritual– we most often enjoy around 20-25g.
 - 40-45g: for a deeper, intentional experience, a higher dose moves us from ritual into ceremony, and is often paired with meditation, breathwork, and or movement practice.

Sometimes we like to add stuff like a touch of cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, maca, ashwagandha, or functional mushroom powders. A pinch of sea salt can pull up sweetness and decrease bitterness perception. Sometimes in a more intentional space, we like to incorporate practices like intention setting, deep breaths, silence and stillness, journaling, ecstatic dancing, wisdom reading, or weird animal movements.

Feel free to exchange hot water for coconut milk, heated just under a simmer. Simply weigh your cacao or intuitively dose, add extras if you like, add your hot liquid (ideally under boiling temperature to preserve nutrients-- 190'f is our rough target), and stir. We give it couple of minutes to infuse, luxuriating in slow deep breaths, then incorporate with an immersion blender or whisk. 

You can't get it wrong. Your cacao ritual is yours to play with and create, finding what feels best along the way. The playful, lightly held ritual is often the most supportive.