Growing regions

A valley in the Cusco region of Peru, on the eastern slope of the Andes where they descend into the Amazon. It is the home of Chuncho, a native cacao population cultivated there for centuries and traded locally long before it was described internationally.

A dry canyon in northern Peru where a USDA-led collection programme identified surviving Nacional cacao — material long assumed to be Ecuadorian and effectively lost — during expeditions that genotyped hundreds of specimens across a dozen watersheds.

A department in northern Peru whose traditional white-bean cacao carries a published genetic finding of its own: its wild progenitors trace to the same river valleys, implying domestication in northern Peru rather than introduction from elsewhere.

A department in Peru's central jungle and one of the country's largest cacao producing areas. Much of the planting dates from crop substitution programmes, and CCN-51 is widely grown alongside native and hybrid material — which makes it a region where the variety question is unusually live.

A Peruvian Amazon region where cacao grows within the species' natural range, with both cultivated planting and wild or semi-wild stands. Genetic diversity here is high, which is characteristic of the upper Amazon generally.

A coastal region east of Caracas and historically one of Venezuela's largest cacao areas, worked from the colonial period by enslaved and later free Afro-Venezuelan communities whose descendants still farm there. Trinitario material predominates.

A Venezuelan name that buyers read as a place and the trade uses as a grade. Carenero Superior denotes a quality classification of cacao shipped historically through the port of Carenero in Miranda state, and there is no designation, delimitation or authority behind it.

A coastal valley in Aragua state, reachable only by boat or on foot over the coastal range, whose cacao holds the only denominación de origen granted to a Venezuelan cacao. The name is used loosely on chocolate wrappers worldwide and the designation it refers to is narrow, community-held and small.

A coastal Venezuelan valley in Aragua state, neighbouring Chuao and similarly reached mainly by sea. It has its own long-standing reputation for Criollo-descended material and is one of the few Venezuelan valley names traded in its own right.

The southern basin of Lake Maracaibo in western Venezuela, and the home of Porcelana — the pale-bean Criollo type that is among the most expensive cacao in the world. The area's association with fine Criollo material goes back to the seventeenth-century European trade.

An eastern Colombian department on the Venezuelan border, in the Orinoco basin lowlands. Cacao planting here expanded through substitution programmes and cooperative organisation, and the region is comparatively new to the speciality trade.

A southern Colombian department better known internationally for coffee, where cacao is grown in the same Andean valleys and frequently by the same farmers. That overlap is part of why fermentation practice there improved comparatively quickly.

Colombia's largest cacao producing department, in the Andean north-east. Production is predominantly smallholder and much of it feeds the country's substantial domestic chocolate industry rather than the export trade.

A Pacific coastal area in Nariño department, near the Ecuadorian border, with a largely Afro-Colombian farming population. Cacao here has been planted partly as a substitute crop, and the region's speciality output has grown substantially since the 2010s.

Ecuador's northern coastal province, wetter than Manabí and with a large Afro-Ecuadorian farming population. Cacao here is grown in mixed cultivation and the speciality sector is younger than in the Guayas basin.

The Ecuadorian province the Arriba name refers to, the seat of the national cocoa research programme, and the region where the replacement of Nacional by the CCN-51 cultivar is most visible. Arriba is a trade name derived from a river, not a designation.

A coastal Ecuadorian province with a long cacao history and a drier climate than the Guayas basin to the south. It holds some of the older Nacional plantings that survived the twentieth-century disease epidemics.

A small Indonesian producing area with a speciality sector built around controlled fermentation and, in several cases, on-island manufacturing. It is where the argument that Indonesian cacao is capable of considerably more than its reputation is being made in practice.

An Indonesian island with a long cacao history including colonial-era estate plantings, some of which survive. Java produces both bulk and speciality material, and the estate sector gives it a more organised post-harvest infrastructure than Sulawesi.

The island producing the majority of Indonesia's cocoa, and the clearest documented case of a smallholder boom followed by a yield collapse — from around 750 kg per hectare in the 1980s to under 400 over the following decades, with the cocoa pod borer as the principal named cause.

The town at the centre of the Sambirano valley in north-western Madagascar, and the effective hub of Malagasy cacao. Several established fermentaries operate here, handling a large share of the national crop.

An estate area within the Sambirano valley whose name appears on bars in its own right — one of the few Madagascan sub-regional designations in use. It illustrates the level at which an origin claim becomes genuinely specific.

A single river valley in north-western Madagascar that produces effectively all of the country's cacao. Roughly ten thousand households farm it on holdings of half a hectare to a hectare and a half, with very little fertiliser or agrochemical use.

Bolivia's main cultivated cacao area, in the Andean foothills north of La Paz. Cooperative organisation and organic certification are both widespread, and it is the source of most Bolivian cacao that reaches the speciality trade.

A Bolivian department where cacao grows genuinely wild in islands of forest within seasonally flooded savanna, harvested by communities travelling to the stands rather than farmed. It is one of very few places producing commercially traded wild cacao.

The cacao region of southern Bahia, which produced most of Brazil's crop, collapsed inside a decade after witches' broom disease arrived in 1989, and is the best-documented regional production failure in the crop's history. It is also the home of cabruca, a shade-grown system in remnant Atlantic forest.

An Amazonian state that has become Brazil's largest cacao producer since the Bahian collapse. It sits within the species' natural range, and production includes both planted and floodplain-forest material.

A region in central Ghana within the forest belt, and one of the areas where the country's cacao industry was established in the late nineteenth century. Production is smallholder, bought and graded centrally, and destined for the blending trade rather than for single-origin bars.

The largest cocoa-producing region in the world's second-largest producing country, and the epicentre of a swollen shoot epidemic that COCOBOD survey figures put at roughly two-thirds of the region's farms — a regional production failure happening now, with numbers attached.

A western Honduran region better known for its Maya archaeological site, and one where some of the earliest chemical evidence for cacao use in Mesoamerica has been recovered from nearby sites. Modern production is small and cooperative-organised.

A remote area of the Gracias a Dios department in eastern Honduras, within the Río Plátano biosphere, where Miskito communities produce cacao in forest conditions. Access is by river or light aircraft, which shapes everything about how the crop is handled and traded.

A southern Indian state where cacao is grown intercropped under coconut and areca palm rather than in dedicated plantations. Most of the crop is absorbed by India's domestic chocolate industry.

An Indian state with growing cacao cultivation, again largely intercropped, and one where the emerging craft sector has begun identifying regional lots.

A central-western Ivorian town at the heart of the country's largest cacao area, sometimes described as the capital of Ivorian cacao. Its significance is entirely one of volume — this is where a substantial fraction of the world's chocolate begins.

A south-western Ivorian region and the site of one of the world's largest cacao export ports. Production in its hinterland is smallholder and bought through a network of intermediaries before being blended for export.

The Pacific coastal plain of Chiapas, one of the principal cacao-producing areas of Mesoamerica for at least three thousand years, and the region whose tribute cacao supplied the Mexica capital before the Spanish arrived to find an established industry already running.

Mexico's largest cacao producing state, on the humid Gulf lowlands. Production is overwhelmingly smallholder and most of it feeds the domestic market, including the traditional stone-ground drinking chocolate that remains everyday practice.

A Nicaraguan highland department where cacao is grown alongside coffee, with the same cooperative structures serving both. Volumes are small and the speciality share is growing.

A municipality in northern Nicaragua where cacao is grown by smallholder cooperatives with centralised fermentation. It is one of the areas where genetic survey work in Central America identified trees of Criollo interest.

An autonomous region of Papua New Guinea where cacao is one of the principal cash crops, grown by smallholders. The sector was severely disrupted by conflict in the 1990s and has been rebuilt since.

The largest island of Papua New Guinea's Bismarck Archipelago and a principal cacao area. It is one of the places where wood-fired drying and the smoky character it produces are most characteristic — and where improved dryer design has made the most difference.

A valley in southern Tanzania and the source of most Tanzanian speciality cacao. Organised producer groups working to a controlled fermentation protocol built the origin's reputation in under two decades — a fermentation achievement rather than a terroir one.

A Tanzanian region neighbouring the Kilombero valley, with a smaller cacao output organised on similar cooperative lines.

A western Ugandan district in the Rwenzori foothills and the centre of the country's speciality cacao. A large proportion of production is certified organic, partly because low external-input farming was already the norm.

A central Ugandan district near Lake Victoria with a longer-established cacao sector than the western districts, largely feeding the conventional export trade.

A Vietnamese central-highlands province better known for coffee, where cacao is grown at higher altitude than in the delta and frequently by farmers with coffee post-harvest experience.

A Vietnamese cacao area where the crop is grown intercropped with coconut on delta smallholdings rather than in dedicated plantations. Much of the resulting cacao is manufactured into chocolate inside Vietnam.

The southernmost district of Belize and effectively the whole of the country's cacao production. Mopan and Q'eqchi' Maya farmers grow it on small shaded plots, and the area was among the first involved in what became the direct-trade and organic-certification model in chocolate.

The Cameroonian coastal region behind Douala, one of the country's main cacao areas and where the wet-season harvest makes drying most difficult. It is consequently where wood-fire drying and the smoky character that follows are most common.

A Caribbean-slope region of Costa Rica with Bribri and Cabécar indigenous territories where cacao has long cultural use. Production is small, largely organic, and much of it is organised through indigenous-led cooperatives.

The far eastern end of Cuba in Guantánamo province, and effectively all of the island's cacao production. The terrain and rainfall suit the crop, and most output has historically been directed at domestic processing rather than export.

A province in the Dominican Republic's Cibao valley and one of the country's main cacao areas. It is where the distinction between fermented Hispaniola grade and unfermented Sánchez grade plays out in practice — the same trees, sold two ways at very different prices.

A Guatemalan department in the central highlands and their eastern descent, with Q'eqchi' Maya communities who have used cacao continuously rather than as a revival. Commercial production is small and much of it is consumed locally.

A department in south-western Haiti and one of the country's main cacao areas. It is where the shift from selling unfermented beans to centralised fermentation has been most visible, and where fermented Haitian cacao first reached the speciality market.

The largest Hawaiian island and the centre of what commercial cacao the United States grows. At roughly nineteen degrees north it sits at the crop's northern climatic limit, and the whole operation is an economic edge case rather than a commercial one.

Nigeria's largest cacao producing state, in the humid south-west. The sector here contracted sharply as the petroleum industry grew from the 1970s and has been partially rebuilt since.

A Caribbean province of Panama and effectively the whole of its cacao production, grown largely by Ngäbe-Buglé farmers on small shaded plots with organic certification widespread.

The centre of Philippine cacao production, on Mindanao. Cacao here descends in part from material carried on the Manila galleon trade from Mexico, making it one of the oldest cacao introductions outside the Americas.

The smaller of the two islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, where cacao grows on and around the ruins of the roças — the plantation estates whose labour conditions prompted an international boycott in the early twentieth century.

An eastern Sierra Leonean district where much of the country's cacao is grown, largely on old plantings under forest shade that were abandoned during the civil conflict and are being rehabilitated.

The largest island of the Solomon Islands and one of its main cacao areas. Cacao is economically significant domestically despite very small absolute volumes, and the same wood-fire drying legacy applies.