Porcelana Cacao The best Cacao in the world?

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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 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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Permalink Reply by luis gabriel on September 6, 2009 at 7:50pm

the beast cacao of the world is in ecuador
nestle buy cacao that is of ecuador

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Permalink Reply by Casey on February 24, 2010 at 11:22am

I'll point out that I had a somewhat similar experience with the Bonnat Porcelana that
Hans Peter Rot had, and it was during the summer of 2008, not long after his review was first published. This bar had, as he noted, a lack of the complexity one might expect, and also, for me, one of the few overwhelming components was a very strong note of Piss. I mean, not pleasant, and the other main components were a most delicious strawberry and chocolatiness, this was bizarre. However, at that time, I really did find myself struggling with the question of whether this bar was work of genius, or a piece of junk (or perhaps a new genre was born -- genius junk?) I really found that, in spite of it all, there was something very interesting, you might even say compelling about this chocolate. I decided at that time that I would not write about the experience, instead giving Bonnat one more try before I finally did review their Porcelana.

Lately, I've been gearing up to publish a Porcelana piece on The Chocolate Note, and have recently given the Bonnat another whirl. To great results, I am very impressed with this chocolate, nothing nasty at all, and it isn't that I can't love any chocolate which contains anything "unpleasant," either, but the intriguing quality was there, without any of that very bizarreness, and yet it is different, it's distinctive as compared to another Porcelana.

So I would say the opinion formed with the 5.4 rating, and the acerbic review, calling this chocolate "grisly" must have been the result of some bad batches in 2008, or of course possibly they are still having them occasionally. (Although for me, grisly is I think in the 3 or below category of rating. time to move over to the "rating systems" discussion?)

I would like some more information on where this idea that Valrhona Palmira is actually a Porcelana originally came from, it seems unusual that Valrhona wouldn't want to advertise the fact, that being such a highly marketable and sought after bean and all. Or perhaps, they are trying to mystify themselves some more (big surprise?)

In my upcoming blog on Porcelana, I won't include any of the "types," and now Bonnat has several of those, but am interested in hearing feedback about how others have experienced these. The blog will focus only on Amedei, Bonnat, and Domori. I did not have the opportunity to try the Scharffen Berger years back, that has been mentioned, nor the Coppeneur limited editions. I was contacted by Coppeneur, who wanted to send me some of their chocolates for review. I wrote back, telling which ones I had not tried, and mentioned an interest in the Porcelana they had on hand at that time. I also noted that I would be honest in my review, noting any criticism of the chocolates for my readers, and supplied them with my mailing address. When, after these emails, I never did hear back from them again, I became suspicious of this company, almost as much as I am of Original Beans, or at least certainly their confidence in their own products. So I am curious how these limited Porcelana chocolates were, but won't be shelling out any bucks to find out.

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