ITALIA × OKINAWA Chocolate – Milk & Bitter with Okinawan Brown Sugar

MARIO Chocolate is a historic chocolate workshop founded in Puglia, southern Italy, in 1875. The company grows a rare Criollo variety of white cacao on its Venezuelan farm and oversees the beans from cultivation and harvest through fermentation before sending them to Italy, where experienced chocolatiers make the chocolate.

The maker states that no child labor is used in cacao production on its Venezuelan farm. This assortment pairs the delicate flavor of MARIO’s white cacao with Okinawan brown sugar from Ie Island in northern Okinawa. It includes six 6 g milk chocolates and six 6 g bitter chocolates.

The compact package features a sugarcane design by Toma Chinen, the tenth-generation head of the Chinen Bingata Research Institute, whose work carries on one of the traditions behind Ryukyu bingata textile art. Its small format makes it suitable for gifting.