Cacao is at the heart of everything we do.
At Territorio de Origen, cacao is not a crop. It is the reason the farm exists.
We grow a mix of Criollo and fine flavor Trinitario clones, all managed using agroforestry principles that keep the soil alive and the forest intact. Everything is organic. Nothing is wasted — we use the fruit, the pulp, the juice, and the bean.
We are also bringing cupuaçu and macambo into production — two relatives of cacao that most of the world has never tasted. And we maintain a small but growing collection of rare and wild Theobroma varieties, because we believe the genetic diversity of this plant deserves a home.
Our cacao becomes ceremonial cacao, tea, and single-origin chocolate bars. All of it starts here, on this land.
Our Theobroma Collection
What makes Territorio de Origen unusual is not just what we grow, but what else grows alongside it. We maintain one of the most diverse living collections of the Theobroma and Herrania genera in private hands — rare, wild, and in many cases almost impossible to find in cultivation.
Theobroma grandiflorum (Cupuaçu), Theobroma bicolor (Macambo), Theobroma simiarum, Theobroma salicinum, Theobroma speciosum, Theobroma glaucum, Herrania purpurea, Herrania umbratica, Herrania sp, Criollo cacao
These are not ornamental plants. They are a living library of genetic diversity that we are actively studying, propagating, and protecting.
Theobroma cacao
This is where everything begins. Cacao has been cultivated, consumed, and revered in this part of the world for over 4,000 years — not as candy, but as medicine, currency, and ceremony. The Theobroma genus takes its name from the Greek for “food of the gods,” and the people who lived with this plant understood exactly why.
We grow approximately 4,500 trees at Territorio de Origen, a mix of fine flavor clones and native Criollo genetics, all managed under agroforestry principles alongside native forest, fruit trees, and medicinal plants. We are expanding to over 12,000 trees. Every variety is selected for flavor, resilience, and its relationship to this specific land and climate.
Our cacao becomes ceremonial drinking cacao, single-origin chocolate bars, and the foundation of everything we make. It is grown here, processed here, and consumed here — as close to the source as it is possible to get.
Theobroma grandiflorum
A close cousin of cacao, but used very differently. Cupuaçu is prized for its juice pulp — intensely aromatic, creamy, and fruity, with a flavor unlike anything else in the plant world. Across the Amazon it is beloved for its juice and its rich seed butter, which has long been used in cosmetics and skin care.
We have approximately 1,000 trees coming into production, special thanks to our friends in the Muruy Community in the Amazon for providing us with seeds. We cultivate this for its delicious juice and incredible butter which we use in our line of all natural beauty products, Origen Cuerpo Salvaje. They will be entering production in 2027.
Theobroma bicolor
Before cacao became chocolate, there was macambo. Known across Mesoamerican and Amazonian cultures for thousands of years, it was cultivated alongside cacao by the Aztecs and consumed in ceremony and daily life long before European contact. Its other name tells you something about how it was regarded: Jaguar Cacao — named for the spotted pattern of its dried pod, and for the place the jaguar holds in Mayan cosmology as an inhabitant of the first level of heaven.
The seeds are rich in protein, healthy fats, and fiber — nuttier and milder than cacao, with a character all their own. We are exploring their use as a nut butter and as an inclusion in our chocolate bars. The juice has its own ancient purpose: indigenous tribes across the Amazon use it to make ambil, a traditional tobacco medicine with deep roots in ceremonial practice.
It only began reaching international markets in 2014. We grow it here because we believe some plants deserve more than obscurity.
