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.