Nacional

Nacional is Ecuador ancient, prized fine-flavour cacao, tied to the earliest known human use of cacao over 5,000 years ago in the country river valleys and the only type cultivated in Ecuador until the early 20th century. Its beans, historically shipped from the up-river Arriba district, gave rise to the legendary Cacao de Arriba, where Arriba names the flavour, not the tree. Devastated by disease from 1916 and diluted by later hybridisation, genetically pure Nacional is now rare and DNA-verified on isolated farms.