Criollo—the Philippines’ lesser-known luxury cacao

While the Philippines may not be one of the biggest chocolate consumers in the world, despite the nation’s affection for mass-produced chocolates, it can take pride in producing the rarest and most luxurious variety of this treat. This is a fact that not many Filipino chocoholics know.

At the International Cocoa Organization’s bi-annual World Cocoa Economy report for 2012, the Philippines was at the bottom list of cocoa consumers, with the average Filipino consuming only 0.32 kilogram of cocoa per year, far from the Swiss’s 5.88 kilograms per capita.