October 22 -25, 2026

Santa Fe Drinking Chocolate Workshop

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What to Expect

A sweet pause from the pace of everyday life. The Santa Fe Drinking Chocolate Workshop in the Ortiz Mountains of Santa Fe, New Mexico is designed to enrich your love of chocolate through making, sipping, and learning. Your co-hosts are chocolate historian Sophia Rea and craft chocolate educator Mackenzie Rivers, founder of The Next Batch School. We’ll help you slow down, connect with chocolate enthusiasts, and learn about drinking chocolate through guided experiences, chocolate making, and time to simply be.

This workshop welcomes at-home cooks, chocolate enthusiasts, and chocolate industry professionals. This is a co-ed event.

❋ Intentional Structure

We blend hands-on teaching, cultural exploration, and space to reflect, so the experience feels both focused and fluid.

❋ Collaborative Energy

Connection is a core part of the process. You’ll have access to your teachers all weekend.

❋ Experienced Teachers

Led by experienced teachers who know how to hold space, encourage participation, and keep things moving with purpose.

❋ A Nourishing Space

Our workshop prioritizes delicious nourishing food. Registered Dietician and Nutritionist, Chef Holly Darnell, will prepare our plant based food throughout the workshop ensuring a spa-like culinary experience. All food is gluten free. Dairy free options.

Escape everyday life to the Santa Fe desert as you make drinking chocolate and sip your way through history.

Day One / Thursday Oct. 22

Arrive & Meet

As everyone arrives, we take time to settle into our rooms, get comfortable, and begin connecting with those around us. The journey starts here. A light grazing board for your arrival. 

Check-In

4:00 pm

Grazing Board

6:00 pm

Day Two / Friday Oct. 23

Mesoamerican Cacao Family Traditions

Together, we’ll learn about Mesoamerican cacao traditions with a mother daughter team from Chiapas. We’ll make drinking chocolate authentically, then spend the afternoon using molinillos and making our own jicaras we’ll take home.

Breakfast Bar

7:00 am - 10:00 am

Making Drinking Chocolate Authentically with Metates

11:00am

Lunch Break

1:00 pm

Jicara Painting Class

3:00 pm

Dinner

6:30pm

Day Three / Saturday Oct. 24

Drinking Chocolate: Then, Now, and Yours

In the morning, we’ll explore modern ways of making and tasting drinking chocolate, and how to create your own personal cup. In the afternoon, we’ll sip drinking chocolate through history, using contemporary methods for sensory tasting. Later, we’ll gather one last time around the table for dinner and enjoy the beautiful night sky.

Breakfast Bar

7:00 am – 10:00 am

Drinking Chocolate Made Modern with Mackenzie Rivers

11:00am

Lunch Break

1:00 pm

Historical Drinking Chocolate Tasting using contemporary sensory tools with Sophia Rea

3:00 pm

Dinner

6:30pm

Day Four / Sunday Oct. 25

Farewells & Goodbyes

Chef Holly will prepare a to-go breakfast as we say our goodbyes.

To-Go Breakfast

7:00 am 

Checkout

9:00 am

SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Meet Your Hosts

Co-Host Mackenzie Rivers

Mackenzie Rivers brings a maker’s hands and a teacher’s heart to the kitchen. Self-taught since 2014, she founded Map Chocolate and the Next Batch School, where she’s spent nearly a decade guiding makers around the world through the slow, deliberate craft of bean to bar chocolate. As our co-host for the weekend, she’ll bring that same patient, hands-on generosity to every cup we make together.

Co-Host Sophia Rea

Sophia Rea carries history to the table as a chocolate historian whose myth-busting, archivally grounded approach cuts through popular misconceptions about cacao’s past. She pairs that historical rigor with contemporary sensory tools, bridging centuries of drinking chocolate with the trained palate of today.

How It Works

  • We can’t wait to see you! If you would like to bring a partner, friend, or colleague, please add SINGLE ROOM to your cart. Then add SHARED ROOM to the cart for the second person.

  • The long weekend workshop does not include travel to and from the Hacienda. We suggest you make arrangements as soon as possible for best times and or car rentals. For those traveling by plane, the closest airport is the Santa Fe Airport, which is 35 minutes to the Hacienda. The Albuquerque Airport is 1 hr 15 min. to the Hacienda. Your welcome packet will include suggestions for those who choose not to rent a car. There’s plenty of parking for guests.

  • After booking, we'll send you a Welcome Packet to get you started. A second packet will arrive 4 weeks prior to the workshop with detailed schedules, packing list recommendations, add-ons to consider, and more.

  • Now all that's left to do is pack your bags and get excited about joining us in Santa Fe!

Book Your Workshop

Space is limited, by design. Small enough that everyone gets to connect, with plenty of room to retreat and recharge on your own when you need it.

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