The sweet white pulp wrapped around each bean.
- Usually
- It drains out of the fermentation box and goes down the drain.
- Here
- We collect it the same day, before it ferments on its own.
Guamal, Meta · Colombia
Nothing from the cacao goes to waste
The pulp gives the wine. The bean, the chocolate. The husk, the tea. Three materials from the same pod, made by hand in Guamal.
70 % of every pod used to be thrown away. Not here.
The chocolate industry only uses the seed. We use all three materials of the fruit, and none of them is thrown away.
The seed, and the only part the chocolate industry uses.
- Usually
- It is sold in bulk and leaves the municipality unprocessed.
- Here
- It is fermented, dried, roasted and stone-ground.
The thin skin the bean sheds when roasted.
- Usually
- It gets swept off the roaster and thrown out, smelling of chocolate.
- Here
- We dry it and steep it, with nothing added.
Made by hand, one at a time
It all comes from the same farm and passes through the same hands. It is fermented, dried and transformed without hurry and in small batches, because that is the only way each product tastes the way it should.
From the husk
Cacao Tea
The thin skin the bean sheds as it roasts, gathered straight from the roaster and sun-dried. It smells of chocolate, tastes mild and carries no caffeine at all.
- Caffeine-free
THE INSIGNIA
From the pulp
Cacao Wine
From the pulp, collected the same day the pods are cut, before it ferments on its own in the box. Dry, with ripe fruit, and no chemicals or preservatives. It is the product everything started with.
- 12 % vol.
- Seco
From the pulp
Milkshake
Cold, thick and tasting of real cacao. It is blended on the spot and drunk right there: there is no way to keep it or to send it.
- Freshly blended
- Made with cacao pulp
Each one has its own process and its own exact point. What fits here is only a sample.
Not just any cacao
In February 2024, in Amsterdam, the cacao of Guamal won gold at the Cacao of Excellence Awards. It was up against 222 samples from 52 countries, and only fifty reached the final.
Behind it are nine hundred farming families organised in a cooperative, and a genetics programme that took thirty years. Meta produced 460 tonnes in 2004, when frosty pod rot and the armed conflict all but ended the crop; in 2024 it passed three thousand.
The recognition does not belong to a company: it belongs to the town and to the families who grow it. Heragon is part of that fabric and works the same cacao, on the same land.
Gold
Cacao of Excellence Awards
Amsterdam · February 2024
- Samples
- 222, from 52 countries
- Reached the final
- 50
- Sample entered by
- Asociación Agroguamal · cooperativa Workakao
- 900
- farming families in the cooperative
- 3,104 t
- produced in Meta in 2024
- 5th
- largest cacao producer in the country
From the trunk to the table
The flavour of cacao does not come inside the seed: it is built over these five steps. A badly fermented or badly dried bean is something no chocolate can fix.
The pod is harvested
Only the pods that are ready are cut: the colour says when. They are all gathered in one place, and everything else starts from there.
The mucilage is drawn off
The pods are split open and the beans come out wrapped in their pulp. A press separates the liquid — the mucilage — but the beans are not washed: the pulp left on them is what will ferment them.
It ferments
The beans go into a wooden box with the pulp they carry. Three to five days, depending on the cacao. It is where they gain their flavour, and the only thing added is time.
They dry in the sun
They come out of the box damp. They are spread in the sun and turned for days until the water is gone: without drying properly they cannot be worked or stored.
They are roasted
The heat loosens the thin skin around the bean. Everywhere else it is swept up and thrown away; here it is kept. What is left is the clean bean, ready to work with.
Behind every one of those steps there are three people from the same household, and a reason why they started doing it this way.
Three kilometres from Guamal
The workshop is three kilometres from the centre of Guamal, on the Pío XII road. That is where the pod is opened, fermented in a wooden box, dried in the sun and bottled: the whole process happens in one place.
Everything is done by hand and in small batches. Each product has its own recipe and its own timings, and keeping to them is what makes next year’s bottle taste like this one.
- Vereda Pío XII, 3 km from the town centre
- Guamal, Meta · Colombia
- Postal code 507051
Anyone who stops by is welcome: we will tell you what is available and you can buy right there. What we do not run are guided tours of the workshop, because it is in use.
Coordinates3.9039° N · 73.7962° O
The road through the vereda is not always signposted. The link opens the location on your phone and plots the route from wherever you are.
You can also find us out there
We take our products to farmers markets, fairs and congresses. That is where you can taste before buying and ask whatever you want.
Coming up
From Tree to Glass: A Morning on the Farm
from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM
A morning on the farm following cacao from start to finish: cutting pods, extracting the pulp, seeing how the beans ferment and ending with a tasting of the wine and chocolate they become.
The family farm, Pío XII rural district · Guamal, Meta
Where we have been
Traditional sweets showcase
A showcase of the region’s baking and sweets. We took the chocolate bar and the table chocolate; the wine did not quite fit, but people talked about it all afternoon.
Casa de la Cultura · Acacías, Meta
1st Embrujo Llanero Cacao Congress
Four days of workshops, talks and a business roundtable convened by the Government of Meta and the Guamal town council, with the region's cacao as the only subject. It is the largest stage the brand has stood on.
Workshops, talks and a business roundtable · Guamal, Meta
Table Chocolate Workshop
An afternoon at the workshop making table chocolate from the bean: roasting, shelling, grinding and shaping your own tablets to take home.
Heragon workshop, Guamal town centre · Guamal, Meta
We get to more places than fit here. The full run, with photographs from every outing, has a page of its own.
Want to try it?
Write to us and we will tell you what is available, what it costs and how it reaches you. No forms, no commitment: one message and that is it.