Cacao cultivation by variety
WE SET OUT TO CHANGE AN OLD AND INDUSTRIALIZED INDUSTRY
For centuries, cacao farmers and chocolate makers didn't talk properly to each other. They lived in separate worlds, literally. Separated by thousands of miles, because cacao is grown in the tropics and chocolate is made in temperate climates. The farmers never knew what their cacao tasted like when it was transformed into chocolate, and the chocolate makers never knew much about cacao farming.
CACOA IS A FRUIT
Cacao is a fruit tree - like an apple tree - and most of the principles of growing fruit trees are therefore the same for cacao.
The first principle is to plant the trees for flavour and variety. All fruit orchards are planted this way, except for cacao. Xoco is now changing this. This is key to improving the flavour in chocolate.
Grafting
To be able to plant for variety, you conduct the technique of grafting. Carefully breeding for flavour in the fruit. This originates with the Romans, 2,000 years ago, when they started to breed apple varieties. Before then, when apples were wild, no one ate apples.
Today, there are more than 7,000 apple varieties. The grafting technique was since applied with all fruits (cherries, pears, grapes, etc.), except cacao.
Growing cacao and grafting are closely linked to fermentation and roasting. Only by having a single variety, with a well understood intrinsic flavour profile, can you experiment with fermentation and roasting to get to the best results.
PRINCIPLES OF AGRICULTURE
The principles for farming are similar to those for all other fruit trees. Some of the more important elements of cacao farming are as follows: Pruning is essential to encourage the tree to produce fruits, instead of growing big and sturdy.
Pruning also ensures that the tree is kept low (under 2.5m tall) and balanced. The target is 3-4 producing branches, or 10 meters of producing branches. The harvest target is 22-30 fruits per tree per calendar year. On average, 22 fruits yields one kilo of cacao, which translates into 70% dark chocolate couverture. As rule of thumb, 2-3 fruits make a 100g chocolate bar.
This is the key to improving the taste of chocolate. It all starts with the exploration of the countryside of the producing countries, in search of the cacao with the best taste potential.
We traveled through the jungles of Central America, checking the flavour of all the cacao trees we came across. It took us over a year to search, evaluate and select. We found the best cacao deep in the jungle, often from a small number of similar trees with the same flavour profile.
