El Pedregal is a rarity in another way – a cacao plantation actually owned by a chocolate maker. Despite the impression some companies may give, you could actually count the number of these in the world on a few fingers. Most cacao is bought from traders, cooperatives, exporters and occasionally big organised producers.

The original Del Pedregal box

Although Valrhona have owned this plantation for twenty years, their first version of Pedregal came out only in 2005/2006. This was perhaps though too soon. The chocolate was interesting, but didn’t quite live up to the hype or match up to the standard of the current Valrhona vintages.

For this reason, perhaps, the chocolate was only available in very fancy pentagonal boxes, with two layers of moulded chocolate, laid out in the shape of a cacao flower. This was all very fancy, but unsurprisingly not sustainable as a product.

Back now in a standard bar format, El Pedregal begins to live up to the hype, replacing the former Venezuelan offering in the Vintage bar range, Palmira.

Like many of the new bars of Chuao coming onto the market, Chapon describe Chuao as ‘criollo’. (See the Manufacturers information section below.)

Chuao is not a criollo variety, it’s a location, a terroir, consisting of a blend of varieties. Other companies guilty of this confusion are Soma and Hotel Chocolat. (Who still described the bar as ‘criollo’ on their website at the time of writing, but I believe have now corrected their packaging.) I am sure they are not the only ones.

Chuao varieties

The Chuao valley is documented as containing 36 different varieties of cacao, from criollo through a range of trinitarios, right down to the Amazonian classic forestaro – amelonado. (San Jose’s Chuao, for example, is produced from three of what they considered to be the best Chuao varieties, cloned from the valley in the 1980s and grown in their own plantation in Rio Caribe. This is the cacao used to make Domori’s ‘Chuao Hacienda San Jose’)

It only takes a simple walk along the road from the beach at Chuao to the village to recognise the wealth of cacao varieties in the valley, as anyone who has been there will tell you. This is the beauty of Chuao as a source, and its strength. Chuao is a remarkable natural blend of varieties, environments and processing that just ‘comes out right’ – almost all the time. (I am told that higher up the valley there is a higher concentration of criollo and a different micro-climate, but I didn’t make it this far myself).

As far as I am aware, all the cacao is mixed and fermented together, there is no separation of the criollo element. This is supported by conversations with Amedei, Amano and questions asked directly in Chuao

Misleading marketing?

It is mistaken then at best and at worst misleading marketing to be telling consumers that Chuao means criollo. The association we can suppose is because Chuao is often considered the best of cacaos, and criollo the best of varieties, so one name attaches to another.

Perhaps over-excitement to heap praise on Chuao is the cause, which perhaps can be seen in this feature from the Chocolate Trading Company. They erroneously base their whole argument on why Chuao is so good on the mistaken idea that it is all criollo. Amedei, for example, have never described it in this way.

All this does not help transparency or consumer confidence in understanding cacao sources or believing what chocolate companies are telling them.

It would be better to be more honest about Chuao and celebrate it for what it is, not what some people would like it to be.