Sourcing cacao, and what single-origin means here

The chocolate in the brownies comes from an estate in the Anamalai hills. It was not a romantic decision — it was a blind tasting, and the Indian bean beat two imports on flavour and one on price.

What "single-origin" is doing in that sentence

It means every bean in the batch was fermented in the same boxes, in the same week, by people who know each other. Fermentation is where nearly all of chocolate's flavour is decided, and consistency there is worth more than any amount of provenance on a label.

The Anamalai beans ferment for six days on banana leaf. They come out with a bright red-fruit acidity that survives conching — which is why the brownies taste faintly of sour cherry and why nobody can ever quite name it.

The uncomfortable part

Buying it directly costs more than buying couverture from a distributor, and it means occasionally a harvest is poor and the recipe shifts a little. Both of those are fine. A batch of brownies that tastes marginally different in July than it did in March is not a defect.