The rarest
Criollo
Thin-skinned, low-yielding, fragile. The most aromatic of the three: red fruit, florals, almost no bitterness. A tiny share of the harvest, and the reason a Haitian bar tastes like nothing else.
01 · The country
A cocoa country
that sold its beans raw.
Haiti produces between five and seven thousand tonnes of cocoa a year, against seventy thousand for the Dominican Republic, on the same island. More than twenty thousand rural families live from it. It is the country's third agricultural export, after mango and essential oils.
For a long time the beans were dried in the sun and shipped raw, with no fermentation. Unfermented cocoa cannot claim the premium markets: the aromatic precursors were never built. The whole value was created elsewhere.
7 500tHaitian production per year, at best
70 000tDominican production, on the same island
20 000+Rural families living from cocoa
10%Share of fine cocoa in Haitian production in 2023 · 4 % before
02 · The cooperative
FECCANO
The Federation of Cocoa Cooperatives of the North was founded in 2001. Six cooperatives at the start, eight since 2018. Around four thousand growers, four in ten of them women. It is Makaya's sole bean supplier.
- Founded
- 2001 · North of Haiti
- Cooperatives
- 8 (6 at founding, 8 since 2018)
- Growers
- ≈ 4 000
- Share of women
- ≈ 40 %
- Average plot
- 2 to 3 hectares per grower
- Production
- ≈ 65 t/yr at the start → ≈ 450 t (2023)
- Price paid to growers
- $0.50/kg (2000s) → ≈ $3.00/kg
- Fair trade
- FLO since 2003 · SPP since 2013
- Organic
- Ecocert since 2011 · 4 co-ops certified, 4 in progress
- Other buyers
- Ethiquable · Valrhona
An honest distinction
Cocoa of Excellence, 2013 and 2015
Haitian cocoa was ranked among the fifty best cocoas in the world at the International Cocoa Awards in 2013 and 2015. That distinction belongs to the FECCANO, to the growers and to their fermentation, not to Makaya. We say so plainly, because the whole point of this house is to name who did the work.
“My meeting with the FECCANO changed everything.”Ralph Leroy · Juno7, July 2020
03 · The turning point
Six days that changed
the price of a bean.
Between 2007 and 2009, with the support of AVSF and Ethiquable, the FECCANO cooperatives learned to ferment. The knowledge did not come from Europe: it came from grower-to-grower exchanges with Peru and Ecuador.
The result can be measured. The share of purple beans, under-fermented, flat, bitter, fell from over 60 % to about 25 %. That is the entire difference between a commodity bean and a fine cocoa.
Six days in tiered wooden boxes. The pulp turns to alcohol, then to acetic acid; the temperature climbs past 45 °C; the bean dies and, dying, releases the aromatic precursors the roast will later reveal. Nothing in this stage can be rushed.
Before 2007
60 %+
of purple, under-fermented beans
Today
25 %
of purple beans · the rest is fully fermented
Duration
6j
in tiered wooden boxes
Drying
<7 %
residual moisture, sun only
Sources: Ethiquable, AVSF, Caribbean Export.
04 · The varieties
Old trees
nobody replaced.
Haiti's cocoa was never modernised. In most producing countries, aromatic varieties gave way to high-yield hybrids. Here, for lack of agronomic research, the old Caribbean trees stayed. What was long a handicap has become the terroir.
The backbone
Trinitario
A Caribbean cross of criollo and forastero. It carries the aromatics of the first and the resilience of the second. This is the backbone of the northern harvest, and of most of our bars.
The base
Forastero
Hardy, generous, frankly cocoa. It gives length and body. Used alone it makes an ordinary bar; blended with the other two, it holds the structure of the high percentages.
Aromatic profile
Haitian cocoa is described in the trade by its fruity and citrus notes, and by a floral quality that survives high percentages. It is the reason the FECCANO sells to Valrhona and Ethiquable, and the reason a 90 % from here is drinkable.
05 · The terroirs
Two regions,
two roles.
The North gives the cocoa. The Grand'Anse gives the breadfruit flour of the Choucoune biscuit. Between the two, Port-au-Prince, where everything is transformed.
19°45′ N · 72°12′ O
North department
Cap-Haïtien, Acul-du-Nord, Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, Ouanaminthe. The eight FECCANO cooperatives, the centralised fermentation chain, and the port through which the beans that stay abroad leave. Ralph Leroy was born here.
- Role
- Cacao · 100 % of our beans
- Cooperatives
- 8, federated under FECCANO
- Growers
- ≈ 4 000
- Production
- ≈ 450 t / yr
18°38′ N · 74°07′ O
Grand'Anse
Dame-Marie, Chambellan, Anse-d'Hainault. Six cooperatives under the REKOKAGA network, some eighteen hundred growers. Its breadfruit, milled into gluten-free flour, is the base of the Choucoune biscuit shown in Paris in autumn 2025.
- Role
- Breadfruit · Choucoune
- Network
- REKOKAGA · 6 cooperatives
- Growers
- ≈ 1,800 · 38 % women
- Programme
- P.R.O.F.I.T. · Trees That Feed, OIT, PAM