Every Step With Love
We travelled through Mexico to find cacao beans that felt whole-heartedly good to share with you. Deselva cacao beans are grown in the rainforests of Chiapas, Mexico, by farmers who hold deep connection to the land that sustains them, then lovingly fire-roasted and stoneground by us in Aotearoa. Our cacao is tended with love from seed to your cup.
Hand to Hand Connection
We go beyond fair-trade certifications, and are committed to real-life connection with the source.
Deselva cacao beans are sourced from our farmer friends in Chiapas, Mexico.
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The coop of cacao farmers are working together to get a good price for their beans, enabling them to maintain their ancestral lands and diverse ecosystems in the face of an ever-expanding concrete jungle.
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The cacao here grows amongst mamay and rambutan, two other deliciously sweet fruits which provide the shade that Theobroma Cacao needs to thrive.
The coop also works to protect their heirloom varieties of criollo cacao which are threatened with the introduction of new cacao species.
When we visited the coop in 2021, we asked if we could help out in the jungle crops. We slept on the ground in their outdoor fermenting area and were greeted at 6am the next day with a big cup of cacao. We worked in the field with Santiago, one of the farmers, pruning trees with a machete and ensuring the pods were healthy. Santiago worked calmly, with love for the trees and finished his working day at midday to spend time with his family. In the afternoon we were introduced to an enormous Ceiba tree in the middle of the jungle and learned how the farmers communicated with her to ask for abundance and blessings.
We maintain regular communication with the farmers and will visit again in 2024.
We feel very honoured to bring the beans from this rainforest to Aotearoa to share with you.
Let's Connect!
For questions about cacao, to enquire about bringing cacao circle to your events or any other curiosities, send us a message!
0226905540
The Hands Behind Deselva
Hola, I'm Hannah, the dreamer and crafter behind deselva cacao. My love journey with Cacao began on a magical island in Nicaragua 5 years ago. Here I spent many hours roasting, hand peeling and grinding beans, with a hot face, blistered fingers and a very full heart. Here I also sat in my first cacao circles and began to hear the quiet whispers guiding me back again and again to my creative, connected and intuitive being.
Cacao has walked alongside me since then, through my expansive journey through the Americas and on my grounding journey homebound to create a family and nest. I have landed in the Far North of Aotearoa and am working alongside my beautiful partner and daughter, pioneering our home in nature.
Cacao, for me, is a gentle guide back home, to the heart where all is connected and all is in flow. Today, I find myself in the overgrown grass outside our home, sipping hot cacao with our daughter wrestling the cup from my hands. I find myself in the smoke of the fire toasting beans and in my little cacao corner, in peaceful silence or song, grinding beans into paste. I find myself in heartfull conversations with beautiful people, cacao cups warming our hands. Deselva cacao is a journey to the heart and I feel blessed to be sharing it with you.
