Piura Blanco — Peru

What an adventure it was until we found and tested the cacao butter for our White Piuro Blanco Chocolate. Now it has finally arrived at our laflor manufactory in Zurich.

The cacao trees of the native Piura Blanco variety grow in the two villages of Puerta Pulache and Paimas in the Piura region of northern Peru. It was not until 2008 that the initiators of Craft Cacao by Original Beans and the Norandino cooperative began cultivating this noble cacao. Founded in 2005, the Norandino cooperative represents more than 7,000 families cultivating cacao, coffee and sugar cane in northern Peru. This is intended to provide people with higher incomes and access to local and international markets. The Norandino cooperative is large by Peruvian standards, and is guided by the values of transparency, equality, respect, responsibility, democracy and quality. All Norandino producers are certified organic and Fairtrade. Because Norandino cacao represents so many different producers from so many regions, chocolate makers can buy single origin and therefore single variety cacao from Norandino.

For the white laflor chocolate, the quality of the cacao butter is of the utmost importance. It is made from cacao beans grown by Norandino farmers in the villages of Puerta Pulache and Paimas. Here, the cacao beans ferment in wooden boxes, and later they dry under a roof in the sun. Then, the farmers produce the cacao mass, from which the company Cacao El Rey in Tarapoto presses the cacao butter.

The cooperative in Puerta Pulache in particular counts many young people who have switched from rice, corn or fruit to cacao farming. Thanks to the so-called agroforestry systems, their income has become a better one. The youth group of this cooperative also manages a nursery project for native cacao varieties.