La Esperanza: Mt. Mambacho

Mt. Mombacho soars over the quaint Colonial town of Granada in Nicaragua, Central America. Overlooking Lago Nicaragua, the biggest lake in Central America, Mombacho is quite a majestic site.

With verdant slopes and plenty of water, Mombacho is also home to Finca La Esperanza, a Cacao and Coffee growing farms that produces high quality, certified organic, shade grown cacao and coffee for the local and international markets.

I am plunging head long into a personal education and passionate exploration of the world of Cacao and Chocolate as I work to combine a Fair Trade Chocolate Business with my passion for permaculture, travel, and learning. So taking a nice long walk up the slopes of Mt. Mambacho to see La Esperanza, where some of the Cacao that I am using to make the super suave Tennessee Booya Chocolate in a Jar for some of our local CSAs seemed like just the trip.

Esperanza has a multi-layered agroforestry approach to growing their crops.

With a high canopy to provide “Sombra Alto” (High Shade) and intermediate canopy intermixed, Cacao and coffee are both medium to lower canopy trees.

The inter-cropping of Coffee and Cacao allows to highly valuable export crops to be grown in close proximity in a way that mimics the natural structure of a neo-tropical forest.
According to Don Amado, the foreman at La Esperanza, there are Three distinct varieties of Cacao grown on the farm: Indio a light colored variety from El Salvador, Forrestero, a deep red vareiety from the Amazon, and Crillollo, the native species that still grows in the region.

Production methods.

After the harvest, Esperanza Ferments their cacao for three days.
This is unique among cacao growers, and creates a very refined and delicious tast. Most growers over ferment their cacao at the request of large Chocolate companies who want the strongest possible flavor in order to put the least amount of cacao in each chocolate bar. In contrast, chocolate that is not over fermented gives a more delicate taste and for connoisseurs, there is little better than a lightly fermented Crillollo bean.

La Esperanza is an organic farm, but to protect some of the older cacao trees they do use a natural pesticide made of coffee and cacao leases and branches ground in water and sprayed over the leaves and trunks of the trees:








A brief History:

Cacao has been an important trade item for thousands of years. used as a currency, a highly sought after drink, and then turned into chocolate by the Europeans, cacao has a rich, and sometimes troubled history.

Like coffee, sugar and tea, cacao was one of the first “drugs” to be trades as a commodity by the colonial powers. because of this cacao has been intertwined with slavery, human trafficking, and environmental degradation as companies sought to extract as much cacao for the lowest possible price to turn it into chocolate for customers.
Now, Fair trade, and similar movements are helping reconnect consumers directly with growers, and re-establish the healthy and amazing relationship that cacao can help create between people in different parts of the world.

Perhaps once again cacao will be the life blood and currency of exchange for the American Continent.
After all, wouldn't it be better to back our money with something that really does grow on trees?
but that's another story all together.

Stay tuned as we search for the perfect cacao, and the best way to keep it JUST and SUSTAINABLE on its way to the CSAs and local food markets in Tennessee.


Booya Cacao's criteria is:

• Carbon Negative
• Social Just
• High Quality
• Whole Food
• No additives

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