Exploring the World’s Most Rare Chocolate Varieties

No matter how you like to enjoy it — using chocolate for baking, whipping up a creamy chocolate mousse, grabbing popular chocolate bar brands for a sweet treat, making chocolate-covered strawberries, or savoring intense, rich dark-chocolate for a sophisticated end to a meal — chocolate is everywhere, and we can’t get enough of it. But not all chocolate is created alike. 

Chocolate comes from the dried, fermented, and processed seeds of the theobroma cacao tree, which largely grows in tropical zones like West Africa, Central America, and South America. The vast majority of chocolate made today comes from the Forastero and Trinitario trees, but they’re far from the only ones. Cacao and chocolate have been around for thousands of years, dating back to ancient cultures like the Mayans and Aztecs, with many other varieties, strains, and sub-types out there in the rainforests and mountains of the world. 

And just like Willy Wonka himself, intrepid chocolatiers and cacao farmers are constantly on the hunt for new or long-lost varieties to share the wide world of chocolate. If you want to broaden your chocolatey horizon, here are some of the rarest types of chocolate you can try from around the world.

Starting with the creme de la creme of the rare chocolate world, there’s Criollo. Of the three main cacao varieties — Forastero, Trinitario, and Criollo — it’s the rarest, accounting for only 0.01% of cacao production around the world. Along with its scarcity, another reason it’s so coveted is that it was the favored cacao of two of the biggest chocolate-loving and worshipping cultures of all time: the Mayans and Aztecs.

Revered as the drink of the gods, Criollo was cultivated by these ancient cultures for ceremonial, medicinal, and financial purposes. It was eventually found across Mexico and Central America by Spanish conquistadors, who gave it the name Criollo (believed to be derived from creole) to mean native or indigenous — an erroneous misclassification due to the fact that cacao originates from the Amazon jungle and not from Mesoamerica. But the name stuck.

One of the reasons Criollo is such a rare find is because the Criollo tree is especially prone to disease, making it harder to cultivate and leading to smaller yields. But it’s also coveted for its distinct taste. Lacking tannins, which produce bitterness in food and beverages, Criollo’s flavor is wonderfully sweet and creamy, with a rounded mouthfeel. Today, it’s largely grown in Venezuela — which is championed as the “cradle of Criollo” — Ecuador, and some parts of Colombia, but can also be found outside Central and South America in Madagascar and Trinidad & Tobago. There are also many subtypes of Criollo found throughout South America.

Covering 60% of the country and home to countless plant and animal species, the Peruvian Amazon is the wild setting for one of the chocolate world’s greatest discoveries; a find likened to a scene from an Indiana Jones film. In the remote Yahuanduz area of Peru’s northwestern Piura region, a variety of white cacao thought to be extinct for over a century was rediscovered in 2008 and reintroduced to the world: the Gran Nativo Blanco.

Meaning “Great Native Bean,” the Gran Nativo Blanco is a type of Criollo cacao and Peruvian Piura Blanco variety that produces white beans. Upon its rediscovery, a cooperative of cacao farmers and producers came together to help save it by identifying the purest trees and focusing on cultivating and producing cacao from this once-lost variety. Their efforts were successful and today, the Gran Nativo Blanco is Peru’s most-awarded type of cacao, with national and international accolades including the World’s Best Cocoa from the 2012 International Chocolate Awards.

While the beans are white in appearance upon harvesting, the fermentation and drying process produces cocoa for dark chocolate. Flavor-wise, it’s complex and multi-faceted, with fruity notes like citrus and earthy walnut undertones. Tasters can also detect floral and sugar notes.

Many of the world’s oldest varieties of cacao and chocolate can trace their lineage back hundreds or thousands of years, which is the case for Chuao. Historically cultivated by Indigenous groups around Colombia and Venezuela, it’s most associated with a small town of the same name located in northern Venezuela. Here, cacao production goes back to the village’s founding in 1660, with some reports saying it dates even further back. For nearly half a millennia, the tiny village has been growing this distinct type of cacao, with a local cooperative selling to fine chocolate purveyors around the world. 

As a type of Criollo, Chuao cacao evokes nutty, fruity, and honeyed tastes on the palate. Cherries, almonds, and caramel are common tasting notes as well, but the flavors can vary by preparation method. Due to its Criollo heritage, phenomenal taste, and scant supply, it’s highly prized by top-tier companies like Amedei, which once called its Chuao offerings the Rolls-Royce of chocolate. Chuao chocolate has also won high honors at international competitions.

Named for its shimmery, porcelain-like white pods, Porcelana is a rare, ancestral type of Criollo cacao found in Venezuela and Colombia. Only grown in a few select places, its scarcity and distinct flavor profile have made it one of the hardest types of chocolate to come by. It’s also considered to be the purest form of Criollo, making it the rarest of the rare of the most prized cacao varietal, thus fetching high demand and prices. Unlike other fruit-forward cacao varieties from South America, Porcelana has a dainty flavor profile, tasting of indulgent, sugary flavors like vanilla, caramel, and nuts. With low levels of tannins, it’s not bitter or astringent, resulting in a refined, warm flavor.

As with other forms of Criollo, Porcelana’s susceptibility to disease is one of the reasons for its rarity. Illnesses and outbreaks have diminished the population in the past, and some farmers in Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo area, the birthplace of Porcelana, have also removed cacao trees in favor of easier forms of agriculture. At the same time, organizations like the Estacion Experimental Chama work to preserve Porcelana and help it thrive by cultivating seedlings and providing them to interested farmers. As further proof of Porcelana’s favored flavor and high status in the chocolate world, dark chocolate made with Estacion Experimental Chama Porcelana has won awards at renowned competitions like the International Chocolate Awards.

Do you want to eat some of the earliest chocolate known to man? To do so, you’ll have to get your hands on a bar of Nacional chocolate. This variety is a descendant of the very first domesticated cacao trees used by humans — taking you right back to the very beginning of chocolate history. Cacao trees were first domesticated by Indigenous tribes around 5,000 years ago, in what is now the Ecuadorian Amazon. From those early trees Nacional was born. 

As the rest of the world discovered chocolate, Nacional emerged as a coveted variety in the 18th and 19th centuries, favored by European chocolatiers for its floral scents and intricate, multi-faceted flavors. Then, in the early 1900s, outbreaks of disease swept through the Nacional cacao tree population. To make their cacao trees more resilient and disease-resistant, farmers started creating genetic variations and hybrids, which helped the trees survive but altered the flavors. By the 20th century, through this combination of genetic alteration and disease outbreaks, it was thought the original Nacional trees were completely extinct.

But the Criollo variety survived and was rediscovered in Ecuador’s Arriba region, in a remote mountain valley called Piedra de Plata. Today, the Nacional can still be found across Ecuador and Peru. It’s believed there are only about 15 genetically pure Nacional trees left in all of Ecuador, making them a truly rare find used in some of the most expensive chocolate in the world like To’ak. A unique strain lives on in a remote Peruvian valley as well, as you’ll read below.

The chocolate industry is full of adventurous tales of lost varieties being rediscovered deep in the rainforest. The Marañón cacao is one of those rare finds, once thought lost to history and now a coveted variety favored by gourmet and high-end chocolatiers. Found in northern Peru’s isolated Marañón Canyon, Marañón cacao is a regional strain of Nacional cacao from the Pure Nacional tree. These trees, which date back some 5,300 years, are among the oldest types of cacao trees in the world. Despite flourishing during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, Marañón was thought to be wiped out by disease and declared extinct by the 20th century. 

While Nacional cacao has been rediscovered across its home range of Ecuador and Peru, the Marañón strain is distinct as it’s believed to be pure Nacional, unaltered by cross-breeding or disease-resistant clones. Cut off by the valley’s remoteness, the genetics of the region’s Pure Nacional cacao trees mutated, producing a type of cacao bean not found anywhere else. All this came to light in the late 2000s, when two Americans working in the region found the trees and sent samples to be analyzed before founding their own chocolate company working directly with the farmers. Today, only a handful of farmers grow Marañón, and its rediscovery and the admiration of the chocolate world have brought prosperity and renown to its home valley. Its refined flavor contains notes of nuts, red fruits, and florals.

Due to the industrial nature of the global chocolate trade, much of today’s cacao production is man-made and cultivated to meet demand. This is one of the reasons the heritage Beniano bean is such a rarity, as this type of cacao grows in the wild and requires a unique collection process distinct from other cacao production.

Growing wild along river banks of northern Bolivia’s Beni region, the Beniano’s isolation and wild-growing nature also mean it’s one of the most genetically pure types of cacao out there. Thriving in the region for centuries, collectors use boats and canoes to reach the hard-to-get pods. While they grow wild, the Beniano trees largely grow in patches known as “chocolatales,” which makes them easier to find and harvest. As Beniano pods are also smaller, there’s less yield, with less fruit to make chocolate and therefore a limited and highly coveted supply.

This means that when you eat a chocolate bar made with Beniano beans, you’re eating chocolate made with cacao that grew wild and untamed in the depths of the Amazon rainforest. Tasting the pure chocolate of the Amazon, you’ll find a vibrant flavor profile with floral and fruity overtones balanced out by nutty, spicy, or earthy tastes. As a wild-growing variety, flavors can vary by terroir, fermentation, and preparation style, making Beniano almost like the wine of the chocolate world.

When you think of chocolate, you likely think of the three main types: milk, dark, and white chocolate (although the FDA once ruled that white chocolate didn’t qualify as chocolate). But in 2014, Swiss-Belgian chocolate manufacturer Barry Callebaut AG debuted an entirely new type:ruby chocolate.

Unlike the other types of chocolate on this list, ruby chocolate is a chocolate variety rather than a variety of cacao. While the company that invented it has kept its exact formula and ingredients a trade secret, it has been said that ruby chocolate’s distinct purple-pink hue is non-artificial and comes from ruby cacao beans. Little is known about the exact variety used, but what is known is that ruby cacao beans hail from the Ivory Coast, Brazil, and Ecuador. As chocolate achieves its dark appearance through fermentation, a patent application hints that the company maintains the natural red hue with unfermented or underfermented beans. Ruby chocolate’s other ingredients include citric acid, sugar, and milk.

Due to its secretive origins and formula, ruby chocolate is a bit of a controversial figure in the chocolate world. But what can’t be denied is that it certainly draws attention with its rosy hue and tart, berry-like taste. Since a limited number of companies make ruby chocolate — Barry Callebaut holds the official recipe, but as ruby chocolate is not trademarked, others can come up with their own variations — it’s harder to find.