In the land of giants

Giant fruits from old growth trees planted in colonial times, these come from the rarest cocoa trees in Vietnam, we think they’re Criollo. Unfortunately there aren’t enough of them to even make a fermentation batch, but we don’t want this now quasi-indigenous stock to disappear!

The photo below shows the big size of these pods (the only one horizontal and the 2 on the top left) and their different morphology compared with the ordinary Trinitario commonly found in Vietnamese cocoa farms, which sometimes exhibits Criollo traits (pod furthest to the right).

Now all we need is a couple acres of old growth forest to plant a few of these in perfect agro-forestry conditions…