C-20260919

The white beans of Bagua - harvest 2025

Our Peruvian cacao comes from Bagua Grande, in the Utcubamba valley in the northern Amazonas region — a warm river valley between the eastern Andes and the lowlands, where the Utcubamba eventually flows into the Marañón. The cacao grows here between 450 and 1,200 meters in altitude, in the shade of bananas, rubber, and pacay. Some plantations are over a hundred years old. It is cacao nativo: native cacao, not a planted high-yield variety. You can see this the moment a pod is opened. While almost all cacao in the world produces deep purple beans, here about three out of ten beans are white — and some of the purple beans still carry a white haze in the core. These white beans are rare, and they are exactly the reason this cacao is so mild: little bitterness, no sharp acidity, a soft sweetness that you normally only find in much more expensive cacao. The farming families harvest by hand, starting in April, after seven months of care for the trees. They break the pods with a short blunt machete so that the beans remain undamaged in their pulp — clean fermentation starts with a clean bean. After that, they go to the cooperative’s fermentation center: seven days in wooden boxes, and four days drying in sun and shade. What you find back in the bar: nut and soft caramel, mild red fruits, a hint of flower — and a chocolate flavor that lingers unusually long.