Today we visited the Finca Cuyancua cacao farm in Izalco, El Salvador. It was quite an interesting tour. We got to see the process where they graft good-tasting cacao onto more native roots. That is also cacao, similar to the way wines are grafted. We saw the difference between ripe and unripe cacao pods on the trees and listened to the fourth-generation owner talking about the business. His operation is interesting because he sends 80% of his cacao to his son in Europe to turn into chocolate. He also loses about 25% of his crop to squirrels.
We got to taste the pods. You don’t want to chew them, but they do taste a lot like leathery if you just suck on them. We saw them being roasted. We cracked them open and were able to also taste the roasted pod, which tastes like very, very bitter chocolate. Then they brewed this into a beverage that also tasted like very bitter chocolate. We also had a delicious lunch of papusas and horchata made from a local fruit.
