Each cacao carries a territory, a people, and a living relationship with the land. Choose where to begin.
Amazonian Native Criollo
Cacao of the Unconquered Amazon
The Awajún are one of the Amazon's great warrior nations — defenders of the rivers, mountains, and forests of northern Peru. They resisted Inca expansion and never submitted to Spanish conquest. Their cacao grows beneath dense native canopy, accessible only by river, processed entirely within community territory.
Bold and full-bodied — deep cacao, roasted nuts, dried fruit, humid earth, long fruit finish.
Qori Inti · Chuncho
Guardians of Ancient Amazonian Cacao
The Asháninka and Matsigenka cultivate cacao within traditional agroforestry beneath dense canopy. Their cacao blends native genetics with selected local clones such as Qori Inti — "Golden Sun" — alongside ancient Chuncho populations regarded as part of the original cradle of cacao genetic diversity on Earth.
Floral cacao · tropical fruit · forest honey · soft earth · elegant acidity · long wild-forest finish.
High-Altitude Chuncho
Ancient Cacao of the Andes–Amazon
Cultivated in Quillabamba and Chungui beneath the Vilcanota glacier, its character is shaped by cold mountain waters, humid cloud forests, mineral-rich soils, and Andean winds. Quechua farming families continue cultivating these ancient populations at unusually high elevations, giving Chuncho its extraordinary aromatic complexity and naturally low bitterness.
White flowers · tropical fruit · honey · bright floral acidity · long elegant finish.
Wild Chuncho
Ancestral Forest Genetics
Among the Matsigenka of the Upper Urubamba and cloud forests of Cusco, Chuncho cacao remains deeply rooted in the living ecology of the Amazonian forest. These ancient populations are considered part of the second cradle of cacao in Peru — some of the oldest and most genetically diverse native lineages in the world.
Wild flowers · tropical fruit · forest honey · herbal cacao · vibrant acidity.
Ceremonial native cacao is cacao kept in the form the forest grew it. Native genetics — not industrial hybrids. Whole bean — nothing removed. Stone-ground, never alkalised. Roasted at temperatures that preserve the medicine.
It is traceable to a single community, a single forest, sometimes a single family. The agroforestry plot that grew it is alive with medicinal plants, banana, pacae, and rainforest trees. The post-processing happens within the community's own territory.
For the Awajún, Asháninka, Matsigenka, and Quechua peoples we work with, cacao is not a flavour — it is a presence. To drink it is to enter a relationship with the territory it came from, and with the people who hold that territory in living trust.
Every step of the post-harvest happens on community land, within community knowledge, under community decision-making.
Polyculture agroforestry beneath dense canopy.
Hand-picked at peak ripeness, pod by pod.
Wooden boxes, native microbes, daily turning.
Slow, sun-dried over many days.
Low temperature, batch-roasted to preserve medicine.
Stone-ground, whole-bean, never alkalised.
Slow conching for texture, never industrial-fast.
By hand, on community land, marked with origin.
Brewed with intention, drunk in relationship.
Most products labelled "cacao" in the global market are not the same plant we offer. Here's how it actually breaks down.
The global cocoa trade is one of the most ecologically and socially extractive food systems on Earth. Around 70% of the world's cocoa is grown in West Africa, much of it on land deforested within the past two generations. Industry investigations have consistently documented child labour, debt bondage, and forced labour on cocoa farms supplying the major chocolate brands you grew up with.
Even where labour conditions are better, the dominant model is monoculture cultivation of CCN-51 — a high-yield industrial hybrid bred for tonnage, not for flavour, not for nutrition, not for forest. It tastes flat because it is flat.
Native cacao — Criollo, Chuncho, and the ancestral genetics of the Andes-Amazon — represents less than 5% of global production. It is the opposite story: biodiverse, slow, community-held, and ecologically generative. Choosing it is not symbolic. It is a structural choice about which cacao world you want to keep alive.
Touch a pin to meet each nation. Their cacao, their lands, their living relationships.