Food of the Gods
Saturday, May 1st, 2010
Cacao was brought from the Amazon Basin to Central America by the Maya 2,600 years ago, according to analysis of residue in Maya pottery. Aztec royalty drank cocoa all day and night to fuel stamina for attending to their many wives and concubines.
Cacao was introduced to Europe by the Spanish around 1585, the date of the first recorded commercial shipment of chocolate from Veracruz, Mexico to Seville. Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus named the tree ‘Theobroma’ which means “food of the gods”. Cacao beans were historically used as a currency, serving in the place of small coins as recently as 1840 on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.
The largest producers of cacao in the Americas are Brazil, Ecuador & Venezuela with a combined market share of 10%.
The best quality cocoa beans are from the Criollo variety. Criollo cacao can be enjoyed directly from the pod and, properly fermented, maintains natural sweetness. When used commercially, the Criollo variety requires less sugar which is why 70% – 85% cacao dark chocolate bars are possible. Gourmet chocolate represents roughly 4% of the world’s annual cacao production, a market of 
160,000 short tons per year.
The main source for Criollo beans today is Venezuela’s Hacienda San José, www.cacaosanjose.com , with representatives in France, Switzerland and Spain. This hacienda has 200 hectares of Criollo cacao with an average density of 1,000 trees per hectare.
Criollo cacao is prevalent throughout C. America, with crop development occurring from Guatemala to Panama, where it thrives in rain-forested regions to an altitude of 2000′.
In Panama, cacao cultivated by indigenous growers produces a superior product preferred by chocolate aficionados over products produced by newcomers to this exotic crop, according to French Cacao Broker Mathilde Grand of Isla Colon’s Starfish Cafe.
Grand’s “Citizens Chocolate” markets tribal cocoa spheres, a hand-crafted organic product from a cooperative in Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean coast of Panama. This region is home to the Ngobe-Buglé whose autonomous lands stretch between International Park Amistad to the coast of the Caribbean Bastimento Nature Reserve. In the shade of their jungles, cacao is cared for and harvested using sustainable indigenous traditions. After collecting the ripe pods, the seeds are removed, brought to fermentation then put out in the sun to dry for several days. Once dried, the seeds are roasted over a fire, ground and rolled into spheres that are perfect for baking or melting into water, milk, and spices for a delicious drink.
© Mathilde Grand
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This post is comprised of excerpts from the article “Cacao: a crop ready for new investment?”, written for Alternative Latin Investor‘s next issue. Photos by Mathilde Grand ©
