Meet Matizo Chocolatiers

Diana Santa and Ignacio Garzón are a young entrepreneurial couple from Armenia, Quindio, that met at the University studying biology. Their chocolate journey started a few years ago alongside Andres Santa when they had the opportunity to discover an incredible cacao from Santander; a product that could not be found locally in Quindio.

“More than six years ago we became fascinated with cacao and the art of making chocolate. We really didn’t know what we were buying and quickly realized we had a lot more studying to do. The process of buying cacao and understanding the importance of the whole farm process in order to really be able to have a good final product became one of our main missions.”

Why chocolate ? 

“We see there is still a lot of potential in this industry. Locally it is an industry that is just starting and growing. There is a lot of room for improvement and we saw an opportunity for us to be at the forefront of that growth and setting ourselves apart as pioneers in this industry.”

What do you look for when you buy cacao?

“It is important for us that the cacao plantations care for nature and have good agricultural practices. Many of the farms we work with have bees and have a plantation within an agroforestry landscape. This is really unique and important for us along with the varieties the producers are growing.  We mostly work with  small producers of 1-2 hectares all of which grow several different varieties of cacao at a time. The cacao beans are also meticulously analyzed to ensure they meet our quality standards. Quindio has not been traditionally a cacao producer in Colombia. This has allowed for many new producers to enter the market with new more specialized varieties of cacao that have really good aromatic and taste qualities.” 

What are your goals? 

“We hope to push the boundaries of the highest possible quality in cacao all while contributing to the local economy and local conservation efforts through responsible agriculture.”

What is special about your chocolates?

“First of all we buy directly from producers, always offering them a differentiated price for their product. We believe they deserve more than the market rate for specialized varieties and good farm practices. Since we buy directly from the producers and we work with really small batches, there will never be one specific flavor profile, it will always vary. We try to blend different beans to provide similar profiles but it will still never be identical. Each batch is unique and we want to celebrate the intrinsic nature of these high quality beans that reflect a plethora of factors influencing the taste. We are also roasters. We are roasting all of our own beans and are advancing on how to best exemplify the flavors of the cacao during the roasting process.” 

Tell us more about these two new products;

the Rostrata and the Paradise. 

“Both the Rostrata and the Paradise are granular chocolate products we developed with cafés in mind. Here in Colombia it is traditional to make a hot chocolate drink from 100% cacao bars, not chocolate powder. Typically the hot chocolate is made by boiling hot water with sugar and chocolate until they dissolve. It is then beaten with a wooden spoon or blended to make the whole drink homogeneous. In a café setting this is not practical or efficient and we also didn’t want to use cacao powder due to its low quality and poor flavor. At our café we would grate these chocolate bars so we could dissolve it a lot faster in a lancet with milk creating a hot chocolate drink in seconds just like a cappuccino. When we started our chocolate journey we decided we needed to give other cafés and daily home chocolate drinkers a product they could use to make their beverage quickly without having to sacrifice the quality. The Paradise is composed of 100% cacao granules that conserves all of the great and healthy fats of cacao. It melts easily in hot water or milk to make beverages or goes really well in any of your desired baking recipes. The Rostrata is exactly the same but it has been refined with organic cane sugar. Both are really versatile products we know you are going to love.”