Wild Chocolate
Across the Americas in Search of Cacao's Soul
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"Inspiring." -MARK BITTMAN
"One of the best stories under the sun." -JOSÉ ANDRÉS
From James Beard Award-winner Rowan Jacobsen, the thrilling story of the farmers, activists, and chocolate makers fighting all odds to revive ancient cacao and produce the world's finest bar.
When Rowan Jacobsen first heard of a chocolate bar made entirely from wild Bolivian cacao, he was skeptical. The waxy mass-market chocolate of his childhood had left him indifferent to it, and most experts believed wild cacao had disappeared from the rainforest centuries ago. But one dazzling bite of Cru Sauvage was all it took. Chasing chocolate down the supply chain and back through history, Jacobsen travels the rainforests of the Amazon and Central America to find the chocolate makers, activists, and indigenous leaders who are bucking the system that long ago abandoned wild and heirloom cacao in favor of high-yield, low-flavor varietals preferred by Big Chocolate.
What he found was a cacao renaissance. As his guides pulled the last vestiges of ancient cacao back from the edge of extinction, they'd forged an alternative system in the process-one that is bringing prosperity back to local economies, returning fertility to the land, and protecting it from the rampages of cattle farming. All the while, a new generation of bean-to-bar chocolate makers are racing to get their
hands on these rare varietals and produce extraordinary chocolate displaying a diversity of flavors no one had thought possible. Full of vivid characters, vibrant landscapes, and surprising history, Wild Chocolate promises to be as rich, complex, and addictive as good chocolate itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Food writer Jacobsen (Truffle Hound) traces in this thrilling chronicle chocolate's "dark journey from regional delicacy to industrial commodity" and recent efforts to restore its original varietals. The tradition of drinking roasted cacao beans took hold about 4,000 years ago across South America, where the beans were so valuable they were sometimes used as currency. Spain conquered Mexico in the 16th century and spread the delicacy through Europe and the new world, fueling the cultivation of "new hybrid varieties" that were less flavorful but hardy and productive enough to meet the growing global demand; by the start of the 20th century, those "bulk beans" made up 95% of the world cacao production. Tracking the movement to revive heirloom chocolate, Jacobsen spotlights enterprising chocolate makers who scour the globe for new sources of "specialty cacao"; members of sustainability nonprofits working with Amazonian cacao farmers; and "choconerds" who popularize specialty chocolate bars via stores and websites. In the process, he draws out the complex global connections—and, often, corporate harms—underpinning the chocolate industry without losing sight of its pleasures ("There was a flash of bliss, a momentary bolstering, as if the gods had my back.... I felt a wormhole open," he writes of his first time eating an heirloom chocolate bar). Readers will be eager to sink their teeth into this.
