On Growing and Harvesting Cacao For Taza Chocolate

We often describe our chocolate as “bean to bar”. This means that we make chocolate right here in our Somerville factory, starting with raw, whole cacao beans. We roast and winnow the beans, grind and refine the nibs, temper and mold the chocolate, and cool, wrap and ship out the finished bars. But “bean to bar” tells only half of the story… What happens before the cacao beans get to our factory?

Pastoral hillside near cocoa farms in the Dominican Republic

For that, we’ll have to travel to the ‘Cocoa Belt’ – the name for the range of land twenty degrees north and south of the equator and stretching around the globe – where Cacao trees are cultivated. Most of the cacao we use to make Taza Chocolate is grown in the Dominican Republic, in the northeastern corner of the country. Cacao is the common name for the Theobroma Cacao tree, the seeds of which are made into chocolate. These seeds are called “cacao beans”; but botanically they are completely unrelated to true beans (legumes). The cacao beans are held in pods that oddly grow right off the trunk and primary branches of the cacao tree.

Ripe red cacao pods

Cacao pods vary widely in color when they are ripe, from deep green to vibrant red to bright yellow. The exact size, shape, and color of the pod depend on many factors, including the tree varietal and growing conditions. They can range in dimension from grenade-sized to football or even pumpkin-sized. Ripened pods are plucked from the tree at the stem with a machete or knife.

A pod split open to reveal the 'baba.' The cacao beans (seeds) are concealed inside the flesh.

To get at the cacao beans inside the pod, the melon-like skin of the fruit is cracked with a machete and the insides scooped out. In a typical cacao pod, there are roughly 40 almond-shaped beans surrounded by a white, mucilaginous pulp called ‘baba’. The baba de cacao is sweet, tangy and delicious to eat, while raw, unprocessed cacao beans are intensely bitter and nearly inedible. The beans are usually a beautiful deep purple, although varieties of different shades from pure white to pink do exist.

On the left, a rare 'porcelano' cacao bean; on the right, a conventional unfermented cacao bean

As the pods are picked and shelled, the baba and beans are collected and added to a sack lined with banana leaves. When the sack is full, it is sewn shut and loaded onto a pack mule. Mules are a necessity on the farm because the rough terrain makes vehicle access impossible, and sacs of wet cacao are too heavy for people to carry very far. The mules carry the cacao out of the jungle so it can be transported to the fermentery.

Left: A sack of fresh-picked beans. Right: Sack being transported by mule.

In the Dominican Republic, cocoa growers are organized into cooperatives large and small. Growers, which are typically individuals or small families, bring their crop to a central location for fermentation and drying. They receive compensation for their work according to how many beans they produce as well as for the quality of their beans.

Click here to continue to the next step: On Fermentation and Drying of Cacao.