Guayas is a coastal Ecuadorian province where Nacional cacao, a criollo strain, thrives in the region's tropical climate and ferments with particular care to reveal its signature floral and fruity notes. The terroir from the Guayas river basin produces cacao with subtle herbal complexity that defines Ecuador's reputation for fine flavor beans. Careful post-harvest processing is essential to bring out Nacional's delicate fruit and floral character.

Hacienda Victoria has been producing a sustainable and socially-responsible cacao harvest since 2012. The process starts in the nurseries, continues in the ground, and ends with the drying of the beans after careful fermentation. The 460-hectare farm was originally acquired in 2009, by farmer Carlos Eduardo García Fuentes, and blessed with the name of his wife, Victoria. These days, the couple’s thousands of arriba nacional cacao trees are intercropped with banana and plantain as shade trees, a natural & traditional approach to farming in this part of the world.

Nacional is Ecuador's historic fine flavor cacao, prized for its aromatic complexity and genetic distinctiveness. Nacional is one of those ten evolutionarily unique types identified in 2008, using samples collected throughout the Americas over the previous century. Samples proven to be of the nacional cluster were taken from Ecuador and northern Peru, where it’s considered one of the traditional cacao cultivars; it was domesticated by indigenous Ecuadorians over 5000 years ago, reaching far beyond its small native growing region. Many years ago, however, the cultivar neared extinction as more productive clones replaced the region’s native trees. Nacional is known to be fruity & floral, with some astringency and almost no bitterness.