We’re Ruth Moloney and Tino Cota, two reformed commodity traders. For years we bought cocoa beans from West Africa, Indonesia, Ecuador and beyond for some of the world’s largest chocolate companies. When we came to Belize, we recognized its unique cocoa heritage and flavor — and we wanted to be part of bringing it to the world in a way that heals the land instead of depleting it.

Floreo Belize is the chocolate we make from that idea. It is single-origin and bean-to-bar: every step, from the living soil to the finished bar, happens on our own farm — Corridgeree — in the Stann Creek District of southern Belize, between the Maya Mountains and the Caribbean Sea.

We grow more than 20 varieties of cocoa, found in a Belizean genebank and carefully grafted onto local rootstock by our team — in the shadehouse, and increasingly straight onto seedlings in the field. We do the same with vanilla: we found wild vanilla growing on our land, and we’re working with researchers to map its DNA and preserve it for future generations. Everything grows together in an agroforestry system — cocoa and vanilla among 25+ plant species — because we believe the health of the soil is what gives the chocolate its flavor.

Our team of 20 is skilled in grafting, vanilla pollination, composting, chocolate making, laboratory analysis, sales, marketing and accounting — meaningful work in a remote part of Belize.

This is going to take a while — regenerating soil is slow work — and we hope you’ll join us on the journey to better soils and exquisite chocolate.

Right now we ship a small, single-origin range of dark chocolate to the US. You can also visit us: our farm store and farm tours are open to anyone traveling through southern Belize.

Ruth writes more about the farm and cocoa and vanilla at her substack: https://ruthmoloney.substack.com