Porcelana Cacao The best Cacao in the world?

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Permalink Reply by Alan McClure on July 3, 2008 at 8:47am

Hi Brady,

That Forastero type with white cotyledons is apparently the Brazilian catongo.

Best,

Alan

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Permalink Reply by Clay Gordon on July 3, 2008 at 10:23am

I notice that there were several TheChocolateLife members at The Fancy Food Show - and I also noticed that you all appear to have missed a Porcelana announcement.

On Tuesday I was collared by the exclusive importer of Bonnat into the US, Francoise Bureau-Crook of Crossings French Foods in Boston (the also import Castelain among other brands). Francoise shared with me that starting later this summer, Bonnat will be producing three Porcelana bars. In addition to the one they are producing now they will be adding a Mexican-origin bar and I forget the origin of the third. I will follow up and let you know.

On another note, the success of the plantation in Tabasco state Mexico that is the source for most of the Mexican Porcelana has encouraged many other farmers in the region to start growing it. The quality has been highly variable due to a lack of consistency in fermentation, so my hope is that the increasing interest in the bean will mean more direct assistance by companies to address those issues. Finally, for those who make it to Spain, Cacao Sampaka produces a bar from those Mexican Porcelana beans. Cacao Sampaka is not imported into the US, but I've tried a fair selection of bars brought back by friends and their work is usually very good. The Mexican Porcelana was very fruity and astringent and not really at all pleasant. Again, this hearkens back to the quality of post-harvest processing practices I mentioned earlier.

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Permalink Reply by Brady on July 3, 2008 at 11:13pm

Alan- Thanks for the follow up. A quick internet search identified it as a white seeded cacao of high cacao butter content.

Clay- Interesting news about Bonnat. Those 3 bars will set me back a cool $51 plus shipping, but I'm looking forward to it. BTW- Sorry you missed our porcelana tasting, it went quite well.

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Permalink Reply by Brady on July 3, 2008 at 11:38pm

I've now found in a book the Catongo and another exception, the Djati Roenggo, a white seeded Trinitario from Indonesia.

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Permalink Reply by Alan McClure on July 4, 2008 at 4:05am

Brady,

What is the title of the book? Sounds like it might need reading.

Alan

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Permalink Reply by Brady on July 4, 2008 at 10:01am

Cocoa, 4th ed. by Wood and Lass: ISBN0-0-470-20618-7 and 063206398x both work. Hans recommended the book.

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Permalink Reply by Alan McClure on July 4, 2008 at 11:48am

Thanks. Luckily I own it already.

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Permalink Reply by Gwen Borders on July 4, 2008 at 12:23pm

Is it just me, or is this discussion about Porcelana really hot ??? :D

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Permalink Reply by Bruce Toy (Coppeneur) on October 5, 2008 at 12:34am

The Coppeneur Limited Edition Mexican and Venezuela Porcelana bars were very successful so we've created a Limited Edition (very) Porcelana bar from Peru. www.coppeneurchocolate.com under "Media".

The Peruvian Porcelana harvest was too small to put through the Coppeneur winnowing machine so we peeled the beans by hand.

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Permalink Reply by Samantha Madell on December 22, 2008 at 9:07pm

Hi all,

Here are a couple of bits and pieces about Porcelana cocoa that people might find useful or interesting (or maybe it will just muddy the waters a bit more):

Back in 1957, Raffaele and Fiorella Ciferri published an article titled "The Evolution of Cultivated Cacao" (Evolution, Vol.11, no.4, pp.381-397).

In this article, the authors use the name Porcelain (they mention that the name is "Porcelano" or "Porcelana" in Spanish). They say that the Porcelain is "an unusual, localized and rare type" which is indigenous to Venezuela. They state that Porcelain cocoa is "supposed to be an albino mutant of Amazonian Forastero or Calabacillo".

This claim seems totally plausible, because it is well documented that Forastero trees can and do produce pure white beans on occasion. This phenomenon is addressed in some detail in the book "Genetic Improvement of Cacao", edited by L.A.S Dias. The whole book is freely available online here.

Here's a relevant passage from the book, taken from Chapter 3:

"Botanical expeditions, which collected cacao germplasm in the Brazilian Amazon region, confirmed the presence of white cotyledon cacao in natural Forastero populations of the Lower Amazon, in a higher frequency than expected [...]. Cacao trees with white seeds were also identified among the Bahia Forastero populations of the Lower Amazon and classified as mutants, designated 'Almeida' (Bondar, 1938b) and 'Catongo' (Miranda & Silva, 1939), increasing the complexity of the scenario even more.

Thus, Amazon Criollo and Forastero with white seeds could be classified as, initially, mutants preserved by man."

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Interestingly, Dias believes that all primitive cacao seeds were probably white. (His reasoning is that the seeds of every other species within the Theobroma genus are white). He surmises that at some time in pre-history, the change to purple seeds happened because that colouration conferred "some adaptive advantage" to the species. This fits in with what we know about the protective properties of the purple antioxidants known as anthocyanins, which give Forastero beans (and other red, blue, and purple plant products) their distinctive colours.

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