Heirloom Cacao Starts at the Tasting Table

In 2023, Kampura became Heirloom Cacao Preservation designation #17, the first heirloom cacao ever named in Guatemala. Around two dozen cacaos worldwide carry the designation. Here's what it means, how it's earned, and what it tells you about the cacao in your cup or your next batch of chocolate.

What Does Heirloom Mean in Cacao?

In most crops, "heirloom" describes an old variety passed down through generations, like a tomato grown from saved seed. In cacao, the word has a stricter meaning, set by the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund (HCP).

The HCP began in 2012 as a partnership between the Fine Chocolate Industry Association and the USDA's Agricultural Research Service. Its founders saw the world's best-tasting cacao slipping away as farms switched to high-yield, disease-resistant trees. Their plan was to find the exceptional trees that remained, connect their flavor to their genetics, and give the farmers who grow them good reason to keep them in the ground.

How a cacao earns the designation

The process runs in a deliberate order.

Blind processing. A farm submits a sample of beans, which arrives at the HCP lab at Guittard Chocolate identified only by a number. The lab turns every sample into chocolate using the same standard recipe, so each one is judged on equal footing.

The tasting panel. An international panel of professional cacao evaluators, each with at least 15 years in the field, tastes the samples blind. Only beans with exceptional flavor move forward.

Genetics and verification. Once the panel designates a cacao as heirloom, a USDA scientist visits the farm, collects leaf samples from the trees that produced the beans, and reviews how the cacao is fermented. The DNA analysis maps what those trees are and records them so they can be preserved.

Flavor decides the outcome. Genetics come in afterward, to explain what the panel tasted.

Since the first designations in 2014, cacaos from Bolivia, Ecuador, Belize, Vietnam, Madagascar and Hawaii have joined the list. Kampura's came in 2023.

How Kampura Earned HCP #17

Kampura began in 2011 on land in Izabal that decades of cattle grazing had worn down. Since then, that pasture has grown into an agroforest of more than 750,000 trees, where cacao lives under a canopy of mahogany, Honduran rosewood. The rest of Kampura hosts natural rubber trees, cardamom, and native forest species.

The cacao submitted to the HCP panel came from that system. In 2023 it earned designation #17, making Kampura the first farm in Guatemala to hold heirloom status. Two more Guatemalan farms, Finca Flores de Miriam and Finca Nahuatancillo, joined the list in 2025. Kampura's designation was supported by a bursary from sponsor Steven Prickett of Eldora Chocolate.

What the genetics showed

After the panel's verdict, USDA researchers visited the farm and sampled the trees. Their analysis found a diverse population with three genetic groups in high proportions:

• Criollo, the ancient cultivated cacao of Mesoamerica, prized for delicate, nuanced flavor and famously hard to grow.

• Trinitario, a hybrid of Criollo and Forastero types that emerged in Trinidad in the 1700s and spread through the Caribbean and Central America.

• Amelonado, a Lower Amazon type with a smooth, classic cocoa character, long the backbone of cacao growing in Brazil and West Africa.

Several other groups appeared in smaller numbers.

That mix explains a lot about how Kampura tastes. The flavor belongs to the whole population: many varieties growing side by side, gathered together, and fermented as a blend under a protocol our post-harvest team has refined over years of smelling, tasting and cutting open beans. Read more about how we ferment.

The whole farm carries the designation

At Kampura, the designation covers the entire farm, so every bean we sell to chocolate makers and every Ceremonial Cacao Bar comes from heirloom-designated cacao.

A Living Gene Bank

Walk through Kampura and you're walking through one of the largest cacao collections in Guatemala. More than 100 varieties grow here, gathered over years from three main sources:

• Guatemala, including the SGU clones, a collection of native Guatemalan cacao selected by the country's agronomists in the 1960s. Kampura is the only farm in Guatemala that holds the complete set.

• The Caribbean, mostly Trinitario material with strong Criollo ancestry

• Ecuador, in the form of Nacional, the historic fine flavor cacao of the Ecuadorian coast, known for its floral aroma

Plant scientists call a collection like this a germplasm bank: living trees kept so their genetics survive. Most gene banks sit at research stations. Kampura's is also a working agroforestry system, and the trees in the collection are the same ones producing the cacao in your cup.

Keeping each variety true

Cacao grown from seed is a genetic gamble. Every seed carries a mix from two parents, so a seedling rarely matches the tree it came from. To keep a variety intact, our team propagates it from the mother tree itself, grafting budwood onto a rootstock Kampura developed on the farm. Some varieties are also grown from rooted stem cuttings. Read more in The Long Patience of a Cacao Tree.

Grafting seedlings in Kampura's nursery

Why diversity matters

Each variety brings something of its own: a particular aroma, a tolerance for heavy rain, resistance to a disease that could sweep through a monoculture. Across the cacao world, older and lower-yielding trees keep disappearing as farms replant with a handful of high-output clones. Every variety Kampura keeps alive stays available to future growers, breeders and chocolate makers.

Diversity shapes flavor, too. A farm planted with a single clone tastes like that clone. Kampura's cacao draws on the whole collection, and that layered character is part of what the HCP panel tasted.

The Criollo Question

Criollo is the name that comes up most when people ask us about genetics. It was the cacao of ancient Mesoamerica, grown by the Maya and the cultures before them, and it carries a reputation for delicate, low-bitterness flavor. It's also a fragile tree, low-yielding and vulnerable to disease. As growers turned to hardier types over the past three centuries, Criollo trees were crossed, replanted and replaced across most of their old range.

Today, genetically pure Criollo is extremely rare. Much of the cacao sold under that name is Trinitario or another hybrid with Criollo in its ancestry. Many of those are excellent cacaos, and a variety label on its own tells you little about how a particular lot will taste.

So we give a straight answer. Kampura's Caribbean material is mostly Trinitario with a high proportion of Criollo genetics, and our native Guatemalan selections, including the SGU clones, come from within Criollo's ancestral range. Criollo appeared in high proportions in the USDA analysis of our trees. That's exactly how we describe it to every buyer.

For anyone choosing cacao by flavor, a blind tasting result is the more dependable guide. Kampura's cacao has passed two: the HCP panel, and the Cacao of Excellence, where it earned Bronze awards in 2023 and 2025 and placed among the top 50 samples in the world both times.

What Heirloom Means in Your Cup and Your Bar

The HCP panel judges flavor, so it's fair to ask what that our flavor is. Kampura's cacao opens with floral notes of gardenia, moves into bright citrus and red fruit, then settles into honey and light toffee, with a toasted almond finish.

John Nanci of Chocolate Alchemy, who roasts and sells our beans himself, calls it "dangerously delicious." It performs across dark, semi-sweet and milk chocolate, which gives makers room to build a range from a single origin.

For ceremonial cacao drinkers

Every Kampura Ceremonial Cacao Bar is made from heirloom-designated cacao grown on our farm. The beans are fermented, dried, roasted and ground at origin in Guatemala, then pressed into a 100% cacao bar with nothing added. When you prepare a cup, you're tasting the same cacao the HCP panel tasted.

New to ceremonial cacao? 

Start with What Is Ceremonial Cacao? and How to Prepare Ceremonial Cacao at Home.

For chocolate makers

Because the entire farm carries the designation, every Kampura bean traces back to heirloom-designated trees, and each lot ships with its own lot number.

That matters if you want to put heirloom status on your wrapper. HCP sets two label tiers based on the share of designated beans in your cocoa liquor:

• Pure Heirloom Cacao: 100% heirloom-designated beans

• Contains Heirloom Cacao: 30% to 99% heirloom-designated beans

To use either mark, makers apply to HCP, which confirms that the cacao traces to the designated farm and hasn't been mixed with other beans, then authorizes the mark in writing. A bar made entirely from Kampura beans meets the sourcing side of the Pure Heirloom standard.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is heirloom the same as organic?

They measure different things. Organic certification covers how cacao is grown, while HCP designation recognizes exceptional flavor and records the genetics behind it. Kampura holds both: our cacao is certified organic by Mayacert, and the whole farm carries HCP designation #17.

Does heirloom mean the trees are old?

In cacao, heirloom refers to flavor and genetic heritage. Kampura's agroforest dates to 2011, so many of our trees are young. They carry varieties that have been grown and selected for generations, kept true through grafting.

How many heirloom cacaos are there?

Around two dozen worldwide, from Bolivia and Ecuador to Madagascar, Vietnam and the Philippines. The newest designations, announced in 2026, went to two farms in Peru and an estate on Maui. Guatemala now has three, and Kampura was the first.

Taste It for Yourself

Ceremonial cacao drinkers: The Kampura Ceremonial Cacao Bar launches soon. Join the waitlist and get 15% off your first order.

Chocolate makers: Whole beans ship from our US inventory on both coasts, and samples ship direct from the farm in Guatemala.

Request a Sample or Quote

Read More

• HCP Designee #17: Kampura Farms (Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund)

• How HCP Works (Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund)

• Plant Introductions, 1966: SGU cacao clones from Guatemala (USDA)