I feel like I am holding a small brick of gold.

Except, this is rarer.

I have been so fortunate to receive a piece of chocolate – Fortunato No 4 Peru, made from cocoa beans of a variety of cacao tree thought to have been extinct – Pure Nacional.

“Discovered” in the 1600s (although I am sure the local people knew what it was!) and then re-discovered by a Swiss chocolate manufacturer traveling in Ecuador in the early 1800s, the Pure Nacional variety was hugely popular because of its flavours of fruit and its floral aroma.  Popular, that is, until it was wiped out by a disease which rampaged through Ecuador in 1916.
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