Elizabeth Montes started making chocolates nearly ten years ago as gifts for her friends and family, an effort that was rewarding but slow. Although she was completely seduced by the joy she felt when other people fed on her treats, she remained frustrated by the speed with which people ate them, especially considering how long it took her to produce them. She wanted to devise a way to slow people down hoping to prolong their chocolate experience and to resurrect the appreciation for an anciently worshipped food whose luster had been tarnished by decades of a low quality, over-sugared and preservative-laden imposter. In addition to using chocolate with higher cocoa content and deeper flavor characteristics, Montes believes that visual beauty is helpful in convincing people that chocolate could be a thing to approach with reverence. "When people see the human thought and labor you put into making something, it's rare that they don't respond to it with greater attention and care." She wants to decelerate the tempo of chocolate consumption to increase satisfaction and awareness even if only for a moment or two.

Montes, a decorative painter in New York City at the time, casually dropped by the 1998 Chocolate Show while on her way to work one day; she couldn't believe people made chocolates for a living! Soon, after trying and failing to get a job at Maison du Chocolat on the Upper East Side, she opted to work for their neighbors, Neuhaus, where she learned how to package, store and sell chocolates. Then she saw the decorative chocolate work of the artist-turned-chocolatier John Down and hoping to put some of her skills to use she went to work in his studio in the Bowery. Simultaneously, she attended FCI's series of chocolate seminars given by the pastry chef, Steve Klc, whose approach inspired her to love and appreciate chocolate even more. She later furthered her knowledge by attending the chocolate technology course at Richardson Researches in Hayward, California.

With visions of slowing time and desiring a return to chocolate's former glory, Montes started reading through her boyfriend's book collection on foods of pre-Columbian cultures, namely, the Florentine Codex, originally the General History of Things in New Spain. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, a Spanish missionary to what is now Mexico, created the 16th-century work. He compiled a collection of manuscript volumes in which Aztec elders relate Mexica life and customs. Within it, there are descriptions and paintings of the early uses for cacao and chocolate. It describes the degree with which the Aztec civilization valued cacao as currency, medicine and as an important part of their rituals. Montes admired the straightforward use of ingredients described therein such as combining chocolate with flowers, chilies and honey. Continuing in the spirit of this approach, she emulates the minimal flavor choices to accompany chocolate. Because Fray Bernardino preserved this knowledge, and for the humanistic, anthropological feat of caring enough to record the details of a civilization on the brink of destruction, Montes, in 1999, made his birthplace the name of her company, Sahagun.

In early 2001, Montes moved to the Pacific Northwest and began selling her chocolate morsels at the Portland Farmer's Market, a place she soon found to be a fresh foods paradise offering indeed the best of the Northwest. To name a few ingredients she combines with base Venezuelan chocolate are: Sundance Farm's Hidcote and Grosso lavender, Marion berries from nearby Sauvie Island, Royal Ann cherries from Rickreall, Stumptown's expertly-roasted coffees, orange mint and rose geranium from a treasured private herb patch. She has come to rely on real spices, seasonal herbs and fresh fruit flavors (not flavorings) to create pure tastes, usually limiting flavor ingredients to one or two in order to avoid obliterating chocolate's intrinsic flavor. To this beginning she adds hormone-free Oregon cream for ganache, which she forms into palets (short coin-like cylinders) and paints them each with a dazzling burst of confectionary luster.

To add to the list of Sahagun's delights, she also makes mendiants, Lolly Chocs (canela truffle pops), Piquin Pops (chile piquin & cocoa nib truffle pops), candied bergamot and toasted almond bars (all citrus peels and ginger are candied in-house), as well as one of her favorites, the Pepitapapa which features toasted pumpkin seeds, and ground jalapeno (originally grown by her father) swirled into an extra bittersweet chocolate bark which she calls her all-American chocolate bar. She feels blessed to live in a place where she can explore both west coast and native ingredients to create confections that may be French in form and technique while remaining American in content.

Now that she has a new kitchen location with the promise of expanding into a chocolate shop on the horizon, she will undoubtedly surprise us with new delectable and irresistible creations. But ultimately, it is her wish that chocolate will compel us to stop for a moment and will show us that an already blissful experience can be made even lovelier when we pay attention to this little mystery we all love putting into our mouths.