Guide · Understanding · Chapter 08 / 10
History of cacao
A pod split open, a shared drink: cacao accompanies stories far older than the bar.
Cacao has been prepared and shared for millennia.
Its history runs through Mesoamerican cultures, colonial routes, plantations and workshops. It carries exchanges, conflicts and knowledge handed down; the people who grow cacao today are continuing its course.
The long view
Before the product,
the fruit
The pod grows on the trunk and branches of the cacao tree. Under its skin, a white pulp surrounds the beans. In Mesoamerican cultures, cacao was a drink, an offering, a currency and a sign of hospitality: so many places around a single fruit.
Today
Living territories
In Peru, Norandino brings families together around cacao and other crops. In Belize, Maya Mountain brought fermentation and drying together in one centre. In Lanquín, Tuq'tuquilal processes cacao on site. History continues in these choices, these places, and the hands that work there.
Everything begins in a fruit.Volume 1, Article 01
Our own story, much shorter, begins on the banks of the Ucayali.
Our story