Bahia
A cacao growing region in Brazil.
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.
- Country
- Brazil
- Also known as
- Bahia, Bahía, cabruca, Ilhéus, Itabuna, southern Bahia cacao
- Flavour families
- nutty, caramel, earthy
Terroir
Humid coastal Atlantic forest around Ilhéus and Itabuna, historically planted by thinning the native canopy and putting cacao beneath it rather than by clearing. That practice — cabruca — is why the region retains forest structure that comparable cacao landscapes elsewhere do not.
Flavour character
Bahian cacao spans a very wide range by construction: bulk material from recovered plantations and selected fine-flavour lots from the post-collapse specialist sector are not comparable, and a single regional flavour statement would be false about both.
Other regions in Brazil
Related
Part of
- BrazilThe 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.
Varieties planted here
- ForasteroDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Bahia — 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.
- TrinitarioDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Bahia — 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.
Sources
- Moniliophthora perniciosa, the causal agent of witches' broom disease of cacao: what's new from this old foe? — Molecular Plant Pathology, 2008(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
- ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)