Dear Somarafters,

Those of you who watch the news will probably have heard about the rain we’re having in Fat North Queensland. Depending on what news source you subscribe to, you will have interpreted this rain either as an interesting seasonal downpour, or yet more evidence (along with everything else on the news) that the world is irretrievably doomed.

Even if the world is doomed, Far North Queensland will continue. North Queenslanders are hardy, optimistic people (did you know that Soma’s local member is Bob Katter?), and well used to the intensities of nature. In a place where so much is born with such vivacity, you get used to sudden and powerful ends.

In the Daintree, where the river has swollen so much that crocodiles have been seen walking down the street (crocs actually hate floods because the water is too cold for them), Farmer John continues to putter away. He says his cacao trees need a good deluge each year, to spread water and nutrients to parts of the soil his irrigation system cannot reach.

Actually, this rain will be good for our Daintree cacao. Cacao trees flower in rain, and require a lot of moisture to turn those flowers into fruit. The midges that pollinate cacao flowers also preponderate in wet conditions. A mature cacao tree can produce up to 50,000 flowers each year, of which less than 5% will be pollinated, and far less than 1% become pods. Cacao flowers are tiny, and look like miniature star-shaped hibiscus flowers. They have the mildest vanilla scent. It takes up to six months for a cacao flower to develop into a fully mature fruit.

Most cacao is harvested at the end of rainy season. This is called ‘main-crop’ cacao, and generally tastes richer, fattier, nuttier, and more chocolatey than cacao harvested before the rainy season (called mid-crop cacao).

Additionally, since main-crop cacao is harvested after rainy season, generally conditions are perfect for sun-drying and fermenting. Farmer John usually starts harvesting his main-crop Daintree cacao in April or May. You can expect the richest, juiciest Daintree cacao to arrive on the Soma shelf sometime in early winter (just when you’ll want it the most).

The main-crop-mid-crop distinction is not so pronounced in our Soma range, largely because we only stock the crème de la crème of cacaos, and those tend to grow in optimal conditions. All of our cacaos grow in places with either mild or no dry seasons, and are harvested year-round (which is rare in the cacao world).

All the same, for those interested, the peak rainy season for each cacao grower is:

Daintree: late December to March
Solomon Islands: November to March
Karkar Island: December to May
Ecuador: January to June
Peru: December to March
Mexico: June to September

Depending on how long it takes to process and ship (changes from source to source, year to year, and mood to mood), we generally start stocking the main-crop harvest of each cacao a few months after the peak of the rainy season finishes (I say ‘peak of the rainy season’ because most of the places we source our cacao never really have a dry season. Karkar Island, for example, doesn’t have a single month in the year with less than 220mm average rainfall, which is almost half the rain Adelaide gets in a year. Farmer John in the Daintree routinely receives Melbourne’s entire annual rainfall in the month of February, and our Ecuadorian cacao grows in a town that receives 4000mm of rain each year).

We try to infor

m the whole soma community when main-crop or mid-crop cacaos are arriving in the Soma store, and give you some new flavours to look for. It excites us an awful lot to receive each batch of new cacao, because then we have an excuse to make afternoon cups, put on our posh little faces, and concoct our hoity-toity tasting notes.

With a little ginger for those going into autumn, and an umbrella for those in FNQ,