Le Chocolat des Îles is a Premier Cru bean-to-bar chocolate. Every bar begins at the cooperative, where beans are tasted and approved before a single kilogram is purchased. We work with corporate gifting companies — providing trade pricing, customisation, and the provenance story your clients receive alongside each gift.
Gifting ProgrammesEvery origin has a verifiable provenance and a founder narrative communicable in a single sentence alongside the gift. The story is not marketing copy invented after the fact — it is the business model.
Cacao and sugar. No cocoa butter added, no lecithin, no vanilla, no emulsifiers. The cleanest possible label for a gifting context where your clients may ask.
Single bar at $30 for desk gifting. The Comparison Tasting at $65 for premium experiential gifting. The Premier Cru Collection at $150 for executive tier. One supplier relationship covering three distinct gifting needs.
Manufactured in Central Islip, New York. Domestic production means predictable lead times, no import complexity, and a supply chain we control end to end.
We work with gifting companies directly. If you are evaluating LCDI for a corporate gifting programme, we would like to hear from you.
Enquire about gifting programmesTrade pricing, customisation, and the provenance story your clients receive alongside every gift.
Every bar of LCDI chocolate begins at the cooperative, before a single kilogram is purchased. Beans are tasted and approved at origin — a process we call Premier Cru selection. What arrives in a gift box is the result of that standard: two ingredients, five cooperative origins, and a story that is verifiable from the cacao tree to the wrapper.
LCDI works exclusively through corporate gifting companies, luxury concierge services, and event specialists. We do not sell direct to corporate end-buyers. If you are a gifting aggregator, concierge, or events company looking for a premium, story-led chocolate at trade pricing, this page is for you.
Every origin has a verifiable provenance and a founder narrative communicable in a single sentence alongside the gift. The story is not marketing copy invented after the fact — it is the business model. Recipients can look it up. The claim survives scrutiny.
Cacao and sugar. No cocoa butter added, no lecithin, no vanilla, no emulsifiers. The cleanest possible label for a gifting context where your clients — and their recipients — may ask what’s in it.
Single bar at $30 for desk gifting. The Comparison Tasting at $65 for premium experiential gifting. The Premier Cru Collection at $150 for executive tier. One supplier relationship covers three distinct gifting needs across your client base.
Manufactured in Central Islip, New York. Domestic production means predictable lead times, no import complexity, and a supply chain we control end to end — from the bean to the wrapper to your client’s desk.
Trade pricing is available to approved gifting partners. Pricing bands by annual volume across all product lines combined. Prices below are per unit, ex-warehouse Central Islip.
| Annual volume (units) | Single Origin Bar | Comparison Tasting | Premier Cru Collection |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 – 99 | $22 | $48 | $110 |
| 100 – 499 | $19 | $44 | $100 |
| 500 – 999 | $17 | $41 | $94 |
| 1,000 + | $15 | $38 | $88 |
| Retail pricing: Single Origin Bar $30 · Comparison Tasting $65 · Premier Cru Collection $150. Volume calculated across all product lines over a rolling 12-month period. Pricing confirmed in writing at programme onboarding. | |||
Every LCDI product is designed to communicate provenance at the moment of opening. The gift does the explaining — your client doesn’t need to.
Moulded from a single cooperative harvest lot. The wrapper names the origin, the cooperative, the cacao variety, and the year of harvest. The back panel shows the full ingredient list — two lines.
Included with every product. Written for the recipient, not the trade buyer: the country, the cooperative, why LCDI chose this origin above others, and how the tasting selection works. A story they can hold while they eat.
Every origin has a distinct sensory profile derived from the cacao variety, fermentation protocol, and roast. Notes are written for a non-specialist reader — no jargon, no wine vocabulary borrowed unnecessarily.
A structured double-blind tasting experience for two. Two bars from different origins, covered sleeves, a note-taking guide. The experience is participatory — the recipient doesn’t just eat the chocolate; they evaluate it.
All five cooperative origins presented together. An individual provenance card for each. The collective narrative — five countries, four continents, nine years of field research — is implicit in the set.
“The gift communicates its own story. You do not need to explain Premier Cru chocolate to a recipient — the packaging does it for you.”
LCDI packaging as presented. Full provenance story included. Your company is acknowledged on the insert card as the gifting sender if required.
A branded gift card or personalised message insert from your company, printed to your specification and included inside LCDI outer packaging. We supply the insert template; you supply the artwork.
Custom belly band or outer sleeve carrying your company branding. LCDI inner packaging — and all provenance materials — fully retained beneath. The co-branding approach most requested by luxury concierge clients.
Holiday orders: submit artwork by 1 November for guaranteed pre-Christmas delivery. Custom sleeve orders for the holiday window typically book out in September.
Submit the form below or email gifting@lechocolat.us. Include your company type, anticipated volume, and any timing requirements. We respond within one business day.
We send one of each product at trade cost — the Single Origin Bar, the Comparison Tasting, and the Premier Cru Collection — so you can evaluate quality, packaging, and presentation before committing. Most gifting buyers make their decision at this stage.
Volume pricing band, customisation tier, lead times, and payment terms are confirmed in writing. No minimum annual volume is required to establish a programme, though pricing bands apply as set out above. You are assigned a named point of contact.
Orders may be placed per-campaign or under a standing arrangement with a quarterly forecast. We accommodate both models. Orders are confirmed with a written acknowledgement and a delivery estimate.
Shipped from Central Islip, New York to your fulfilment warehouse, your office, or directly to individual recipients. We support both bulk-to-warehouse and direct-to-recipient models. Tracking provided on all shipments.
Plan your annual gifting programme around these windows. Order deadlines are advisory minimums; custom sleeve orders require additional lead time.
The primary gifting window. Client appreciation, employee recognition, and executive year-end gifts. The highest-volume period by a significant margin.
Client retention and relationship re-engagement after the holiday break. Valentine’s Day creates a second premium window for luxury concierge clients.
Employee milestone recognition, conference season, and business event favours. The Comparison Tasting works well as a structured team experience at offsites and retreats.
Conference season peaks. Early holiday programme planning for Q4 custom orders should begin by September. New programme onboarding is easiest in this window.
All orders ship from Central Islip, New York via UPS Ground or UPS 2-Day. Tracking provided on all shipments. We support bulk-to-warehouse and individual direct-to-recipient models. International shipping is not currently available.
Two-ingredient bean-to-bar chocolate without emulsifiers has a minimum shelf life of 18 months from the production date when stored correctly. All LCDI products ship with at least 12 months remaining. Best stored below 70°F, away from direct light.
All LCDI products are vegan and dairy-free by formulation — cacao and sugar, nothing else. Kosher certification is in progress; contact us for current certification status. Not produced in a nut-free facility.
All approved partners receive a digital asset pack at onboarding, plus a named account contact for ongoing orders. Below is the full list of what’s included.
“Our clients ask about the chocolate. That almost never happens with gifting. The story on the wrapper is the reason — recipients actually read it.”
“We use the Premier Cru Collection for C-suite year-end gifting and the single bars for volume desk gifting. One supplier, two very different price points. It simplifies the programme considerably.”
Before committing to a programme, evaluate the product. Request a sample set — one of each tier — at trade cost. No commitment required.
Request a sample setPrefer to reach us directly?
gifting@lechocolat.usBuyers at this level often prefer direct email. Both routes reach the same person. We aim to respond within one business day.
We work exclusively with gifting companies, concierge services, and event specialists — not with corporate end-buyers directly. Individual bars are available at lechocolatdesiles.com
Seven products. Two ingredients. The same standard applied to every bar: beans tasted and selected at origin before purchase. This is the LCDI Premier Cru collection.
Grande Rivière du Nord Cooperative. Where the story began — nine years of field research started with a single taste in a Cap-Haïtien market.
San Antonio Maya Cooperative. Three thousand years of cacao cultivation, uninterrupted. The Maya Q’eqchi’ farmers have passed this knowledge across generations.
Cacahuatl Cooperative. Sixteen members, eight men and eight women, producing one of the rarest beans in Central America.
San Francisco de Macorís Cooperative. Centuries of cultivation in the agricultural heartland of the Dominican Republic.
Jembrana Cooperative. The agricultural west of Bali — volcanic soil, island microclimate, and a chocolate unlike anything from the Americas.
All five cooperative origins in one gift-ready box. 315g total. The full range of what Premier Cru selection produces across four continents.
View collectionTwo Premier Cru bars, delivered blind. A tasting guide walks you through the comparison. Origins revealed after.
View experienceAvailable for corporate gifting programmes across all three tiers.
Gifting ProgrammesGrande Rivière du Nord Cooperative
I found these beans on a Thursday afternoon in Cap-Haïtien in 2013 — not looking for chocolate, but on a UN humanitarian mission that happened to pass through a market. One taste stopped me completely.
That moment became nine years of field research across cacao-producing regions. Haiti was where it started. It is still, in many ways, where the story is most alive.
Every LCDI bar begins before a single kilogram is committed. At Grande Rivière du Nord, I spent time with the cooperative, tasting across harvests until I could identify the lots worth selecting. Only beans that pass my tasting standard make it into an LCDI bar. This is what Premier Cru means in the context of chocolate: not simply single-origin, but the specific lots within an origin chosen for their flavour profile above all else. The beans in this bar earned their place.
The Grande Rivière du Nord beans produce a chocolate that is deeply complex — earthy and full-bodied, with a long finish. Dark fruit notes emerge as the bar warms on the tongue.
Grande Rivière du Nord sits in the northern highlands of Haiti — the same region where Haitian cacao cultivation has its deepest roots. The cooperative is small by design: a tight network of farmers who prioritise fermentation quality and post-harvest care above volume. These practices are the reason this chocolate is possible.
Cacao. Sugar. Nothing else. No added cocoa butter, no lecithin, no vanilla — no additives of any kind. The flavour you taste is the flavour of the bean: the soil it grew in, the way it was fermented, the care taken at every step before it reached our factory in New York.
San Antonio Maya Cooperative
The Toledo District sits at the base of the Maya Mountains, where cacao has been cultivated without interruption for over three thousand years. When I first tasted beans from San Antonio, I understood immediately that this was a place with nothing left to prove.
The Maya Q’eqchi’ farmers here have passed down cacao knowledge across generations — not as heritage performance, but as lived practice. The fermentation protocols, the drying rhythms, the understanding of when a bean is ready: these are not things learned in a textbook. They are the reason this chocolate tastes the way it does.
At San Antonio, I worked through multiple harvests before committing to a sourcing relationship. The beans in this bar were chosen because they passed a tasting standard — not because they were available, or affordable, or convenient. Premier Cru is the French term for a wine classification built on exactly this logic: origin matters, but selection within the origin matters more.
Belize produces a chocolate of uncommon brightness — a clean, assertive acidity that opens into notes of red fruit and toasted almond. The finish is long and dry, with none of the bitterness that comes from inferior beans or excessive roasting.
San Antonio is a small village in the Toledo District, one of the least-visited and most agriculturally rich corners of Belize. The Maya Q’eqchi’ cooperative here grows cacao intercropped with native forest — a practice that preserves biodiversity, improves fermentation complexity, and produces beans of a character impossible to replicate in monoculture plantations.
Cacao. Sugar. Nothing else. No added cocoa butter, no lecithin, no vanilla. Every flavour note you taste comes entirely from these beans — from the soil they grew in, the forest they grew alongside, and the care taken at every step before the bar reached you.
Cacahuatl Cooperative
The name the cooperative chose for themselves tells you everything: Cacahuatl — the original Nahuatl word from which the modern word ‘cacao’ descends. These sixteen farmers understood what they were growing before I arrived. My job was simply to listen.
El Salvador is one of the smallest cacao-producing countries in the Americas. That scarcity is part of the story — but it is not the most important part. What drew me to the Cacahuatl cooperative was the deliberateness of what they had built: eight men and eight women running a small operation with an outsized commitment to quality. Sixteen people. One extraordinary bean.
El Salvador produces very little cacao relative to its neighbours. That alone does not make it special. What makes the Cacahuatl beans special is what emerged when I tasted them: an earthy, layered complexity that is genuinely rare in Central American chocolate. Premier Cru means I did not buy these beans because they were available. I bought them because, after tasting, I could not justify buying anything else.
The Cacahuatl bar is the most grounded in the LCDI collection — deeply earthy, with a nutty richness and waves of dried tropical fruit underneath. It rewards slow eating. This is not a chocolate that reveals itself immediately.
Sixteen members. Eight men, eight women. The Cacahuatl cooperative operates in Usulután, one of the few Salvadoran regions with the microclimate conditions necessary for fine-flavour cacao. Their output is small enough that most of the world has never tasted what they produce.
Cacao. Sugar. Nothing else. The flavour of this bar is entirely the flavour of these beans — grown by sixteen people in one of the least-known cacao regions on the continent, selected because they were the best I tasted.
San Francisco de Macorís Cooperative
The Cibao Valley has been producing fine-flavour cacao for centuries. Long before ‘single-origin’ became a marketing term, the farmers of San Francisco de Macorís were growing beans that European chocolatiers sought by name. I came to understand why.
The Dominican Republic is one of the world’s most important sources of fine-flavour cacao — not because of volume, but because of what generations of careful cultivation have made possible in its soils. What I found there confirmed something I already suspected: the best chocolate in the world is made by people who have been at it for a very long time.
The Cibao Valley produces more fine-flavour cacao than most people realise — which means there is also more variation in quality than most buyers acknowledge. Premier Cru is not a country designation. It is a lot-level commitment. The beans in this bar were selected from within the cooperative’s harvest because they met a flavour standard. The cooperative’s reputation made them a candidate. The tasting made them a certainty.
San Francisco de Macorís produces the smoothest bar in the LCDI collection — a chocolate of great elegance, with stone fruit and a natural sweetness that does not require sugar to amplify. The texture is silky and full. The finish lingers without effort.
San Francisco de Macorís is the capital of Duarte Province, deep in the Cibao Valley — the agricultural heartland of the Dominican Republic. The cooperative here has roots that predate modern direct-trade frameworks by generations. They did not need an outside buyer to tell them what quality meant. What they needed was a partner willing to pay for it.
Cacao. Sugar. Nothing else. The smoothness of this bar is not manufactured through additives or emulsifiers. It is the result of centuries of cultivation practice compressed into a single bean — and the discipline to leave everything else out.
Jembrana Cooperative
Most people go to Bali and see what has been built for visitors. Jembrana is the other Bali — the agricultural west, where the island grows things instead of performing itself. The cacao there is as serious as anything I have tasted in the Americas.
Nine years of field research across cacao regions taught me one consistent lesson: the most interesting beans grow where the fewest buyers are looking. Jembrana is not a famous origin. It does not need to be. The proof is in the cup — a chocolate of tropical complexity and startling depth that could not come from anywhere else on earth.
Bali produces cacao across several regencies, with enormous variation in quality. The decision to source from Jembrana specifically — and from within the cooperative’s lots specifically — was made on taste alone. Premier Cru means the geography is a starting point, not a guarantee. The guarantee comes from the tasting that happens before any commitment is made.
The Jembrana bar is the most tropical in the collection — warm and aromatic, with a profile that moves from ripe fruit to a deep, almost spiced finish. It is the most immediately seductive of the five origins, and the one most likely to surprise someone who thinks they already know what dark chocolate tastes like.
Jembrana is the westernmost and least-touristed regency of Bali — an agricultural landscape of rice paddies, coconut groves, and cacao farms growing in volcanic soil enriched by centuries of eruption and recovery. The cooperative here produces a small volume of beans with a quality consistency that reflects both the exceptional terroir and the post-harvest discipline of the farmers.
Cacao. Sugar. Nothing else. The tropical warmth of this bar is not flavouring — it is the bean itself. Volcanic soil, island microclimate, and the fermentation knowledge of a cooperative refining its practice for years. Two ingredients. One place in the world that could produce this.
Five origins. Two ingredients. One standard.
There are roughly 600 volatile aroma compounds in Theobroma cacao. Fine wine produces around 200. Most people have never tasted the difference between origins — because most chocolate is not made to show it.
The Premier Cru Collection is five bars that make the difference impossible to miss. Each comes from a single cooperative, made from a single harvest lot selected before purchase. Each contains two ingredients: cacao and sugar. What changes between bars is everything that grows in the ground — and what that produces in the cup.
What’s Included| HaitiGrande Rivière du Nord Cooperative | Dark cherryRoasted earthDried fig |
| BelizeSan Antonio, Toledo District | Red berryToasted almondBright acidity |
| El SalvadorCacahuatl Cooperative, Usulután | Roasted earthWalnutDried mango |
| Dominican RepublicSan Francisco de Macorís, Cibao | Stone fruitGentle sweetnessSilky texture |
| BaliJembrana Cooperative | Ripe bananaWarm spiceAromatic finish |
Every bar in this collection begins before a single kilogram of cacao is purchased. Across five cooperatives on four continents, the same standard applies: beans are tasted at origin, and only the lots that pass that tasting make it into an LCDI bar. This is what Premier Cru means — a lot-level commitment to flavour that precedes and supersedes every other consideration. It is, as far as we know, what makes LCDI the only true two-ingredient dark chocolate made from beans flavour-tested and approved before purchase across five cooperative origins.
Chocolate at this level does not need occasion. It is its own occasion.
The Premier Cru Collection is the gift for someone who appreciates the difference between a thing made carefully and everything else — a wine drinker, a coffee drinker, a cook, or anyone who has ever wondered what chocolate actually tastes like when nothing is added to cover what the bean does on its own.
Five bars. Five places. One standard that connects them. This is what we built.
Two Premier Cru bars. One blind tasting. Infinite difference.
You don’t choose which two origins you receive. That’s the point.
A wine professional tastes blind because knowing the label changes what you taste. The same principle applies here. Two Premier Cru bars — drawn from our five cooperative origins — arrive in a deluxe presentation box without identification. A tasting guide walks you through the comparison. The origins are revealed only after you have encountered them on your own terms.
It is, in our experience, the most honest way to understand what terroir actually means in chocolate.
What’s IncludedTwo bars, labelled only Bar A and Bar B. Origins sealed beneath a reveal tab.
Evaluate each bar for aroma, texture, and flavour. Write notes before moving to the next.
Which bar, and what would you recognise again?
Discover which cooperative origins you were tasting.
Whichever two origins arrive in your box, they share one thing: the beans were tasted and approved at the cooperative before a single kilogram was committed to purchase. This is the Premier Cru standard — applied not to a country designation, but to the specific harvest lot inside each bar. The blind tasting format exists precisely to let that standard speak for itself.
Each order is a different pair. Ten combinations, each one a distinct conversation between two origins.
Le Chocolat des Îles — the chocolate of the islands.
The name is a direct reference to Mauritius, the island nation where LCDI’s founder was born. The company is a product of that origin in more than name: an island sensibility, a comfort with distance, and a willingness to travel to find what is genuinely worth finding.
I found these beans on a Thursday afternoon in Cap-Haïtien in 2013 — not looking for chocolate, but on a UN humanitarian mission that happened to pass through a market. One taste stopped me completely.
Ravi Goojha spent decades as a UN diplomat, working with governments through humanitarian missions across South America, Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq, and parts of Africa — moving between countries in various states of rupture. In Cap-Haïtien that afternoon, he was not in a market researching the chocolate industry. He was doing his job. What he tasted changed the direction of the years that followed.
What began as a single encounter in a Haitian market became nine years of systematic research across cacao-producing regions. Not desk research — field research. Time spent at cooperatives, tasting across harvests, learning what distinguishes a Premier Cru lot from everything produced around it, and building the supplier relationships that make LCDI possible.
Five cooperative origins across four continents: Haiti, Belize, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Bali. Each one reached not through a commodity broker but through direct field contact. Each one selected because the beans, tasted at origin, were the best available in that region at that time.
The term Premier Cru comes from French wine classification — it designates not just a region but the best lots within a region, selected for their specific character. LCDI applies the same logic to cacao. Single-origin means one country. Premier Cru means the specific cooperative harvest lot within that country that passed a tasting standard before any purchase was made.
Every LCDI bar begins with that standard. It is why there are only five origins rather than fifty. Selection takes time. Relationships take years. The result is chocolate that tastes like the place it came from — because every other decision along the way was made in service of that.
Cacao and sugar. The decision to make chocolate from two ingredients and nothing else is not a marketing position. It is a statement about what chocolate actually is: a product of the bean, the soil, the fermentation, and the craft of the maker. Cocoa butter, lecithin, vanilla, and emulsifiers exist in most chocolate because they are cheaper than quality. They are absent from LCDI chocolate because quality is the point.
LCDI is manufactured in Central Islip, New York. Bean-to-bar means exactly that: from the raw cacao bean to the finished bar, every step of production happens in the same facility under direct oversight. No outsourced conching, no bought-in couverture, no third-party manufacturing. The control over the process is what makes the Premier Cru standard deliverable at scale.
We work with corporate gifting companies who want to give something with a story that holds up under scrutiny.
Gifting ProgrammesGifting programmes, trade enquiries, and sample requests.
To discuss a gifting programme, request samples, or ask a question about LCDI products, use the form below or reach us directly.
Prefer to reach us directly?
gifting@lechocolat.usBuyers at this level often prefer direct email. Both routes reach the same person. We aim to respond within one business day.
Individual bars available to purchase at lechocolatdesiles.com