- The Good: A survey of the history and the people of wild and heirloom chocolate
- The Bad: The structure of the book is choppy; personal account is distracting
- The Literary: Lots of great information in small bites, from historical to ecological to political
In the vein of a travelogue, Rowan Jacobsen uses the story of his visits to South America to introduce the history and the people of wild chocolate. Wild chocolate is exactly what is sounds like—chocolate that’s grown wild. Many once believed wild chocolate to be extinct, as the strains of chocolate we know through Hershey, Mars, and Nestle only grows under very specific conditions, mostly in Africa. But chocolate originated in the Americas, so it only makes sense that some cacao still grows wild in the hidden rainforests.
What I love most about this book is that it opened my eyes to the chocolate supply chain, to its history, and the people who over the last two decades have sought to bring back heirloom cacao that’s sustainable, rich in terroir, and good for local economies. As you might expect, Big Chocolate has taken something that was once ceremonial and highly varied among indigenous groups and turned it into something that is overly sweet, waxy, and all tastes the same.
The story of chocolate in Africa is rife with economic tragedy. Ghana and the Ivory Coast account for of two-thirds of the world’s production of chocolate. Those farmers never come close to knowing where their cacao goes, as there can be more than a dozen middlemen, each taking their own cut, with each batch getting mixed with others as needed. Most farmers never taste their own chocolate.
Worse still, child labor is rampant. In 2001, an amendment to an FDA appropriations bill to fund the labeling of chocolate produced with child slave labor passed the House. Big Chocolate rallied and lobbied the Senate. Instead of the labeling law, they agreed to a voluntary protocol to eliminate the “worst forms of child labor”. The issue is partly because the chocolate makers have no idea of the details of their own supply chain, and they have plenty of reasons not to look too deep.
I’m eager to learn more about the genetic sequencing of cacao varieties, after Juan Carlos Motamayor at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service sequenced the genome. He found that all modern cacao could be traced back to ten original families from the Upper Amazon. But since that initial report, two additional families have been identified, and more may still be discovered. The Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund has certified seventeen heirloom varieties.
Unfortunately, I find Jacobson’s personal account of visiting these places underwhelming. His story and insights don’t add much. The personalities of the cacao enthusiasts really shine, including German engineer Volker, who was assigned to Bolivia by the German government to pay local farmers to grow something other than coca, the source plant for cocaine. But even the cacao explorers, who hunt through the jungles of Guatemala, Brazil, and Mexico, all blend together with the interweaving structure of the chapters. Overall, the storytelling and presentation distracts from the already fascinating information.
You don’t have to read this book; I’ll put the good stuff here: Try mail-order chocolate from Caputo’s, Dancing Lion, or The Meadow. Learn more online at the C-Spot, The Chocolate Lie, Dame Cacao, the Fine Chocolate Industry Association, or the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund. Look for the label “bean-to-bar” on chocolate in-stores.