/ Quiet happiness, made slowly
Our story
Quiet happiness, made slowly
Yiga is a Dzongkha word for a gentle, contented joy. It felt like the right name for something that takes eleven weeks to make and four minutes to eat.
Nine years in, still learning.
The same slab we started with, chipped on one corner.
Where it began
Bhutan had cacao neighbours, but no chocolate of its own
In 2016 there was no bean-to-bar chocolate made in the kingdom. There were, however, cacao farms a day’s drive away across the southern border, and a country with an unusual patience for things done carefully.
We started with a domestic oven, a hairdryer for winnowing and a great deal of ruined chocolate. What kept us going was a conviction that mountain climate — dry, cool, steady — was unusually good for resting cacao, and that Bhutanese design traditions had something to say about how a bar should look in the hand.
Nine years later the method has not changed much. It has only become more deliberate. Every bar still rests three weeks before it is wrapped, and every wrapper is still folded by someone whose name we know.
Milestones
Nine years, four turning points
2016
A borrowed kitchen
Two friends roast four kilos of Assamese cacao in a borrowed kitchen in Chubachu and give the bars away to neighbours.
2018
First harvest partnership
A direct-trade agreement with eleven smallholder families in Samdrup Jongkhar, priced above the regional average.
2021
The Norzin Lam workshop
We open a glass-fronted workshop and tasting counter in the centre of Thimphu, so people can watch the tempering.
2024
Beyond the Kingdom
Yiga bars travel to tasting rooms in Delhi, Bangkok and Milan — still made in batches of no more than twelve kilos.
What we hold to
Three promises we do not bend
Pay first, negotiate never
We publish the price we pay per kilogram every harvest, and pay it before the beans leave the farm.
Small on purpose
Twelve-kilo batches keep us close to the chocolate. Growth that costs us that closeness is growth we decline.
Nothing to hide behind
Three ingredients, listed in full. No emulsifiers, no flavourings, no shortcuts through the resting weeks.
Written one slow Sunday in the workshop, with the grinders still turning next door.