Nacional (cocoa bean)
Nacional cacao, also known as fine aroma or fino de aroma, is a rare cocoa bean from South America, mainly Ecuador and Peru. Its roots go back about 5,500 years in Ecuador, where the earliest cacao trees were domesticated.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Nacional was highly prized by European chocolatiers for its floral aroma and complex flavor, marking a golden era for Ecuadorian cacao. But in 1916 a disease called witches’ broom devastated Nacional across the country. Afterward, foreign cacao varieties were introduced in the 1930s, and many Nacional trees were hybridized.
By the early 21st century, most experts believed pure Nacional trees were gone. In 2009, Ecuador’s agricultural research institute INIAP tested about 11,000 cacao trees and found only six that were 100% pure Nacional (0.05%).
In 2013, To'ak Chocolate found old Nacional trees in the Piedra de Plata valley in Manabí. DNA testing of 16 mature trees showed 9 were pure Nacional, bringing the number of DNA-verified pure Nacional trees in Ecuador to 15.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:18 (CET).