Forastero
The bulk of the world's cacao, and the least meaningful of the four names — it functions largely as a residual category meaning 'not Criollo'.
Forastero accounts for most of the cacao grown in the world, and most of the chocolate anyone eats. The beans are purple, higher in the compounds that give bitterness and astringency, and the trees are hardier and higher yielding. The Amelonado population that dominates West African planting is the type most people mean when they say Forastero.
The name is also the weakest in the scheme. As used in trade it covers a very wide range of genuinely distinct populations across the Amazon basin, grouped mainly by not being Criollo. Some of that material — the upper Amazon populations in particular — is aromatic and prized, which the name does nothing to signal.
What the name actually classifies
Forastero is not a genetic group. The word means 'foreign' and in practice it names everything that is not Criollo, spanning populations across the Amazon that differ from each other as much as either differs from Criollo. Genetic work identifies distinct clusters within what the trade lumps together here, several with quite different flavour potential from West African Amelonado.
What is not known
The equation of Forastero with low quality is a trade convention rather than a finding, and it conflates genetics with intended use: bulk cacao is grown, fermented and traded for consistency at volume, and the resulting flavour reflects that objective at least as much as the plant. Upper Amazon material within the same trade category is used in fine chocolate.
- Also called
- Amelonado, bulk cacao
- Trade group
- forastero
- Flavour families
- bitter, roasted, earthy
Cultivation
Hardy, high yielding and more disease resistant than Criollo, which is why it dominates plantings in West Africa and much of Brazil.
Flavour
Typically more bitter and astringent than Criollo, with straightforward roasted cocoa character and little aromatic complexity in the Amelonado material that dominates bulk production.
Holds for West African Amelonado. It does not hold across the whole trade category, and upper Amazon populations within it are aromatic.
Share of world production
The large majority of world production.
Direction is unambiguous across trade reporting; ChocolateHQ prints no percentage.
Related
Characteristic flavours
- BitterHigher polyphenol content than Criollo material, which shows as both bitterness and astringency in the cup.
- AstringentWithin this variety's aromatic potential. Variety sets a ceiling rather than a result. A drying, puckering sensation rather than a taste — and the single most reliable indicator of under-fermentation.
Commonly confused with
- AmelonadoAmelonado is a real population inside Forastero, which is close to a residual category meaning 'not Criollo'. Naming Amelonado is far more informative and almost nobody does it.
Grown in
- GhanaWest African planting is dominated by Amelonado Forastero, which is the material most industrial chocolate is made from.
- CameroonForastero-type planting, with the red-tinted beans that cocoa pressers value being a characteristic of the local material.
- IndiaForastero and hybrid material planted from the 1960s, usually intercropped under coconut or areca rather than in dedicated plantations.
- Sierra LeoneForastero-derived planting under forest shade in the eastern districts, much of it on old stands now being rehabilitated.
Covered in
- Cacao varieties explainedThe bulk of world production and the category modern genetics has broken apart.
Compared in
- Criollo vs ForasteroSet against Criollo, with the practical consequence of each difference.
Regions where this is planted
- BahiaDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Bahia — Brazil's historic cacao region on the southern Atlantic coast, and the place witches' broom disease collapsed after 1989.
- BeniDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Beni — 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.
- Alto BeniDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Alto Beni — Bolivia's main cultivated cacao area, in the Andean foothills north of La Paz.
- AshantiDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Ashanti — 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.
- Western RegionDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Western Region — Ghana's largest cacao producing region, in the wetter south-west towards the Ivorian border.
- San-PédroDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. San-Pédro — A south-western Ivorian region and the site of one of the world's largest cacao export ports.
- DaloaDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Daloa — A central-western Ivorian town at the heart of the country's largest cacao area, sometimes described as the capital of Ivorian cacao.
- PríncipeDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Príncipe — 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..
- SulawesiDocumented as planted in this region, though plantings within a region are rarely uniform and material is frequently mixed. Sulawesi — The Indonesian island that produces most of the country's cacao, and the clearest illustration anywhere of an origin's reputation being set by an incentive structure rather than by its beans.
Sources
- ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
- Geographic and Genetic Population Differentiation of the Amazonian Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao L.) — PLoS ONE, 2008(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)