Original cocoa beans

If you want to taste gold, drink a cup of cocoa. Today, cocoa is for many a familiar drink with the taste of childhood, and 500 years ago, the conquistadors first tried chocolatl and realized that they had not tried anything like it either in childhood or in adult conquistador life. They were so impressed by the taste of chocolate that they called cocoa beans “brown gold” and began to import tons of them to Europe. We do not just offer you to try a familiar drink, but buy cocoa beans and cook the nectar of the Aztec gods yourself – just like the Aztecs and Mayans did.

Beans for chocolatl – the beginning of the story

What came first: the chicken or the egg is still puzzling over. But we know for sure the answer to the question of what came before: chocolate or cocoa. In the beginning there were and are beans – the fruits of the chocolate tree, or “Theobroma cacao”, which grows in the tropics. Even 3500 years ago, the Aztecs learned how to process cocoa beans and cook the “food of the gods.” The ancient Indians ground the grains, mixed them with honey, spices, and treated themselves with might and main to chocolatl. Today, there are many more ways to process beans. Cocoa products are made from seeds: powder, butter, grated cocoa and grits, which are used to make desserts and drinks. But you can buy raw cocoa beans and grind them in their pure form, preparing the most fragrant, natural and delicious cocoa.

Whole cocoa beans

Cocoa beans – varieties that we bring to Ukraine from Venezuela
Cocoa is native to the tropical forests of Latin America and Africa. We do not grow chocolate trees: it is too cold for these capricious plants. Cocoa beans come to us most often processed, in the form of a powder. But for true connoisseurs of “brown gold” we have prepared a surprise – cocoa beans.

The best of the best – criollo variety

In the era of the colonization of South America, and it was from there that the Old World learned about cocoa, the beans were divided according to the principle of “own” – “alien”. “Own”, or Criollo, called authentic cocoa beans, and “foreigners”, in Spanish – Foractero, – beans grown in another locality or country.

Since then, it has become a tradition: criollo has become the name of elite varieties. The taste of ripe beans is very delicate, with a pleasant chocolate bitterness and nutty-honey notes. The most expensive chocolate is made from Criollo. These cocoa beans are not easy to buy: their share is only 1-5% of the world cocoa crop. The fact is that the trees that bear fruit for the production of Creollo cocoa are very vulnerable to disease and cannot grow anywhere except in the tropics of Latin America. Criollo cocoa beans are like Arabica in the world of coffee, only even rarer.

Criollo plantations are concentrated on the “Chocolate Coast” of Venezuela. It is from there that the main importing countries, the Netherlands and Spain, buy cocoa beans in bulk in order to process them into powder or oil. However, we also managed to get Criollo cocoa beans, you can buy them on the New Tea website.

Cocoa brothers: forastero and trinitario

It is much easier to buy wholesale cocoa beans of the Forastero variety. This variety occupies 80% of the market due to the fact that the plants are unpretentious, they grow in South America and Africa.