How Many Cocoa Varieties Exist?

For decades, both literature and industry professionals grouped cocoa beans into three main categories:

• Criollo, known for its finesse and aromatic complexity

• Forastero, more robust, high-yielding, and dominant in global production

• and Trinitario, a natural hybrid of the two, discovered in Trinidad and Tobago in the 18th century.

This classification, still widely used in trade, is now considered scientifically outdated.

What Does Science Say Today?

Recent advances in plant genetics have shed new light on the diversity of the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao). Thanks to research by institutions like CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) in Costa Rica, we now know that there are at least ten distinct genetic groups, identified from cocoa samples originating in South and Central America and Africa.

Among them: Amelonado, Nacional, Contamana, Curaray, Guiana, Iquitos, Marañón, Nanay, and more.

Each group has unique genetic, agronomic, and sensory traits: pod shape, disease resistance, yield,and most importantly, radically different flavor profiles.

Why Is This Diversity So Important?

Cocoa is not a uniform ingredient. Like wine or coffee, its richness comes from genetic diversity, also known as varietal diversity.

Each cocoa variety can yield beans with distinctive aromas: floral, fruity, woody, spicy, and more.

But this expression also depends on terroir, fermentation, roasting, and the care taken at every step.

In industrial chocolate, these nuances are often erased by standardized processing.

In origin-driven chocolate, they are everything. They’re what create truly unique flavor profiles.

Orfève’s Approach

We work exclusively with fine, traceable, and identified cocoas, often from heirloom or heritage varieties.

We reject high-yield hybrids produced through aggressive crossbreeding, which prioritize productivity over flavor.

Each origin we select is the result of a genetic, sensory, and human choice.

Because great chocolate starts with the variety.

And there can be no exceptional taste without rigorously preserved diversity.