Criollo, Forastero And Trinitario: How Cacao Is Classified

Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario are names for groups of cacao trees, not grades of chocolate. Criollo is the now-scarce type associated with Central America, Forastero is the Amazonian group that supplies most of the world's beans, and Trinitario is a human-made cross between the two that appeared on Trinidad. Those three words have carried the whole conversation about cacao genetics for roughly a century, and the genetics stopped agreeing with them in 2008.

That is the part the category leaves out. A bar that says "100% Criollo" on the front is making a claim no retail buyer can check, about a category that the people who sequence cacao have already replaced with something more precise.

What the three names actually refer to

The traditional split is built on how the tree and the pod look, and on where the tree was found. It is a field classification, invented before anyone could read a genome, and it was useful for exactly that reason.

Read that table twice and the flaw shows up on its own. Two of the three describe a plant population. The third describes a breeding event. Sorting a thousand trees into three boxes when one box is "something we made" was never going to hold.

The 2008 study that broke the three-way split

Motamayor and colleagues, writing in PLoS ONE in 2008, genotyped 1,241 cacao accessions with 106 microsatellite markers, of which 96 were kept after ten were dropped for inconsistent results. After removing mislabelled and off-type material, 952 individuals remained, 735 of which met the membership threshold for the main analysis. The paper reports an overall F_st of 0.46, which the authors describe as strong differentiation between groups.

They found ten clusters, not three: Marañon, Curaray, Criollo, Iquitos, Nanay, Contamana, Amelonado, Purús, Nacional and Guiana. A follow-up analysis of 559 individuals split those into 36 subclusters. Most of what the trade calls Forastero scattered across several of the ten, which is the paper's central point: the old label was hiding real genetic distance.

Two limitations matter if you are going to quote this. First, the authors excluded every Trinitario and Trinitario-by-Amazonian clone from the analysis as human-made hybrids, so the study does not test Trinitario's origin at all. Second, 289 individuals were removed from the 1,241 genotyped as off-types and human-mediated hybrids, and the authors note that access to wild Amazonian germplasm is restricted, so some populations are thinly sampled. They also call the upper limit of K = 20 arbitrary.

Criollo vs Forastero vs Trinitario on a real label

None of those ten cluster names will appear on packaging. What appears instead is the old trio, plus origin, plus sometimes the phrase "fine flavour". That last one has an actual administrative meaning, and it is worth knowing where it comes from.

The International Cocoa Organization, established under the United Nations in 1973, maintains the list of fine or flavour cocoa exporters in Annex C of the International Cocoa Agreement 2010. The ICCO estimates fine flavour cocoa at about 12% of total world exports of cocoa beans, with Latin America accounting for 90% of those fine flavour exports. At the 109th Council session in April 2024, Annex C was amended with country percentages: Peru at 75%, Ecuador at 75%, the Dominican Republic at 60%.

The ICCO's own generalisation is that fine flavour beans come from Criollo or Trinitario trees and bulk beans from Forastero. It then immediately lists the exceptions that spoil the rule. Ecuador's Nacional trees are Forastero-type and produce fine flavour cocoa. Cameroon's Trinitario-type beans have so far been classed as bulk. The organisation is explicit that the difference between fine and bulk is flavour, not other quality factors, and that no single universally accepted criterion exists.

So what should you actually look for

Variety is a weaker signal than the steps after harvest. Fermentation length, drying, roast profile and whether the cacao was alkalised change the cup more reliably than the tree did, and each is a decision a maker can describe. Ask about those instead.

Origin is the one claim that is cheap to make and awkward to fake, because a single-estate purchase leaves a paper trail. If you want the longer version of why that matters, we cover it in our note on how origin and cacao quality are connected, and the flavour side in single-origin flavour profiles. The Peruvian Criollo story specifically is set out in Peru's Criollo growing tradition.

What is in a Chaski tube

Chaski Cacao is a 600 g tube of dark chocolate buttons at 77% cacao. The daily dose printed on the tube is four buttons. The cacao is single-origin Peruvian and Ecuadorian, from a farm in Peru our founder has visited and whose farmers he has met, and it is ground at low temperature rather than conched hot. The sweetener is coconut sugar. There is no added cane sugar, no emulsifier, no seed oil and no palm oil in it, and every batch is tested for lead, cadmium and pesticides.

We do not print a variety name on the tube. The 2008 cluster data is a decent argument for why that word alone would tell you less than the country, the farm and the grinding temperature do. The full ingredient list sits on the Chaski Cacao product page, and the rest of the library is in our guides.

Next time a bar claims a variety, ask the maker which cluster it came from. The answer tells you how much of the label is sourcing and how much is copy.

Sources

1. Motamayor JC, Lachenaud P, da Silva e Mota JW, Loor R, Kuhn DN, Brown JS, Schnell RJ, PLoS ONE, 2008;3(10):e3311
2. International Cocoa Organization, icco.org, Annex C amended April 2024
3. International Cocoa Organization, icco.org, origins and spread of cocoa growing
4. International Cocoa Organization, icco.org, frequently asked questions