A cactus walks into a chocolate bar.

I'd apologise for opening with that, except it isn't a joke — it's practically an ingredients list. This week's bar is genuinely built around the fruit of a cactus, and the more you look at how it's made, the more it reads like a magic trick performed with a straight face.

First, though, a round of applause, because the timing is good. This week the International Chocolate Awards published the results of its 2026 Latin America & Caribbean competition, and Feliu had the kind of day makers remember for years: two Golds — a single-origin Chontalpa 70%, and a milk-and-coffee bar, the Moca, that the judges named the best flavoured bar in the whole competition with a near-perfect 90.9 — plus a run of five Silvers behind them. For a small Mexican maker in a field full of the continent's best, that's a statement.

So let me introduce them properly, because the origin story earns it. Feliu is the creation of Víctor Feliu, who was born in Valencia, Spain, and has been chasing cacao around America and Europe since 2014. He turned that obsession into a life in Guadalajara, beginning — genuinely — in a single room of an old apartment in the Santa Tere neighbourhood, before growing into a small workshop near the local market and, now, a proper little factory. The philosophy hasn't drifted an inch: only Mexican cacao, bought directly from growers in Chiapas and Tabasco, visited regularly, processed bean-to-bar in Guadalajara. The whole project is, in Víctor's own framing, an attempt to give back to Mexico its old title as a chocolate country — not just a place cacao comes from, but a place great chocolate is made.

Now, the trick. Because the bar we're actually here for is the strangest thing he makes.

You put a square of Feliu's Pitaya de Mayo on your tongue and your brain immediately files a report: watermelon. Clear, juicy, unmistakable. A moment later, strawberry coulis. Then a soft, sweet-tart pear note, and underneath it, a flicker of something darker — tamarind, hibiscus. So you turn the wrapper over, expecting a smoothie. It says: cocoa, sugar, pitaya de mayo, cocoa butter. Four things. No purées, no "natural strawberry flavour," no watermelon whatsoever. The fruit is doing all of it.

The magician's assistant is pitaya de mayo — the fruit of a Mexican columnar cactus, a brighter, more perfumed cousin of the cactus pear. Its name is also a calendar: pitaya for the fruit, de mayo because it ripens in a short burst around May and then disappears for the rest of the year. It doesn't travel well, it doesn't keep, and it waits for no one. In the highlands of Jalisco people anticipate its brief season the way other places wait for the first real tomato. For most of us outside western Mexico, a bar like this is the only way we will ever taste it.

The other half of the handshake is quietly the more remarkable one. The cacao comes from Soconusco, in Chiapas — prized cacao country for the Maya and the Aztecs, about as close as chocolate has to an ancestral home. Feliu builds the bar to frame the fruit rather than fight it, and the result is balanced: mild bitterness, a gentle astringency, and a vivid fruit acidity that lands like ripe red fruit rather than a candy flavouring. The International Chocolate Awards gave this one its own Gold back in 2023. Gimmicks don't win Gold. Magic tricks that actually work do.

It's vegan, more or less by circumstance — when the fruit is carrying this much of the melody, you don't need milk to round it out. It's light, bright, faintly tart, and it tastes overwhelmingly of a warm afternoon. If you want a single bar to mark the turn from summer into autumn, this is a strong candidate for the last vivid, juicy thing on the way out the door.

The punchline, then, is the one we started with: the cactus was never the joke. It was the whole point.

A note on getting hold of it: the Pitaya de Mayo is in stock and ready to ship right now. The rest of the Feliu collection — including both new Golds — is available to pre-order, in production as we speak, and will ship as soon as it lands. So if the Moca has your name on it, you can claim it today rather than hope it's still around later.

Meet the bar →

The maker

Feliu Chocolate — Guadalajara, Mexico. Founded by Víctor Feliu (Valencia, Spain); Mexican cacao only, direct from growers in Chiapas and Tabasco. Two Golds at the 2026 ICA Latin America & Caribbean competition — Chontalpa 70% and the Moca / Leche y Café (Best Flavoured Bar, 90.9) — plus five Silvers.

This week's bar — Pitaya de Mayo (Cactus Pear) 58%. 80g. Cacao from Soconusco (Chiapas) and Chontalpa (Tabasco), infused with pitaya de mayo (Stenocereus queretaroensis). Four ingredients; watermelon, strawberry and pear with tamarind and hibiscus undertones. ICA 2023 Gold, flavoured bar. In the World's Top 100. Vegan · Dairy-free · Gluten-free. 

Pair it with — a sparkling rosé or a light, fruity red; or, without alcohol, hibiscus tea or a citrus cold brew. Alongside: fresh berries or a citrus sorbet.

Taste the trick → 

Shop the whole collection →