Chocolates of Ecuador -- Arriba, Nacional, CCN51
Posted in:
Opinion
Two things:Jeff, the practice is to graft CCN-51 scions in Nacional stock (so you get a CCN-51 tree and pods with Nacional root stock). Grafting is a asexual plant reproduction technique... so you get 'pure' scion material. If people were grafting pure Nacional scion on CCN-stock you will get pure Nacional pods... the stock does not contribute to the pods (well, depends who pollinates what... but that is a another tale).About coops mixing Nacional and CCN-51, I wouldn't generalize. Some do mix, some other do not because they have premiums for Nacional... and the members are old and they have only Nacional trees. You have a considerable amount of self-selection among coop members. Cheaters are normally expelled if the coop is buying fresh beans (en baba). The "pepa" of CCN and the "pepa" of Nacional are quite distinctive (hybrids Nacional x CCN are a nightmare... but what do we call these?
So,if a coop pays a premium of $10 for Nacional, if they pay market price (or below market price) for CCN-51, this pushes CCN farmers to the intermediaries (and out of the coops), because these guys gave them some other things (i.e., loans) and the productivity of the crop supplies for the other services...Nevertheless, even in the best case (premiums: 40% over market price for FT ORG cocoa), but CCN-51 yields three times as much as Nacional.... so younger cacaoteros tend to have CCN51.For the rest.... I agree with you... I think Nacional or Arriba have become merely a marketing term, buy quality is more a hit and miss thing (depends on who, what year, what was the sourcing that person used).
