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From James Beard Award-winning author 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. A childhood of waxy mass-market chocolate had left him indifferent to the sweet, and most experts believed wild cacao had disappeared from the rainforest centuries ago. But one dazzling bite was all it took. Chasing chocolate down the supply chain and back through history, Jacobsen explores the abandonment of wild and heirloom cacao in the 19th and 20th centuries in favor of the high-yield, low-flavor varietals preferred by “Big Chocolate”-the handful of giant corporations that control the industry and have historically paid its five million developing-world farmers less than a dollar per day.
In Wild Chocolate, Jacobsen journeys deep into the rainforests of the Amazon and Central America with the chocolate makers, activists, and indigenous leaders who are bucking the system, pulling the last vestiges of ancient cacao back from the edge of extinction and forging an alternative system in the process-one that brings prosperity back to local economies, returns fertility to the land, and protects it from the rampages of cattle farming. Serendipitously, the rediscovery of these heirloom and wild strains has also triggered a chocolate renaissance, as a new generation of “bean-to-bar” chocolate makers races to get their hands on these rare varietals and produce extraordinary chocolate displaying a diversity of flavors no one had thought possible. Chock-full of unforgettable characters, hallucinatory landscapes, hair-raising encounters, and surprising history, Wild Chocolate promises to be as rich, complex, bittersweet, and addictive as good chocolate itself.
Published | 02 Jan 2025 |
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Format | Hardback |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 288 |
ISBN | 9781639733576 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Illustrations | 16-page color insert |
Dimensions | 210 x 140 mm |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
[This] engaging narrative history doubles as an adventure tale, taking readers from Montezuma's treasure vaults to shrewd profiteers' warehouses. Recent years have seen a reclamation of cacao farming by small, sustainable, organic farmers using traditional methods but also modern brokers to bring their products to a worldwide audience, fueling a cacao renaissance.
Washington Post
Forget Dairy Milk–it's a bar made from wild Bolivian cacao you really want. In this delicious adventure, American food writer Rowan Jacobsen travels through the Amazon and Central American rainforests in search of its source . . . . A wonderful blend of history, ecology, sociology and economics. This book promises to make 'choconerds' out of its readers: you'll never look at a tub of Celebrations in the same way again.
The Guardian
[A] masterwork . . . The greatest appeal of Wild Chocolate comes in its slow, page-by-page seduction. After absorbing Jacobsen's prose about bars produced from wild cacao, you can't help but want to try some yourself.
Tim Carman, American Scholar
I've always trusted Rowan Jacobsen's sense of taste. When [he] turns his palate and pen to an obscure aspect of our food culture, there's a good reason. In his latest book . . . he weaves his deeply researched findings into a delicious tale.
Seven Days
A delightful read, both for the travel writing and the deep dive into the art of chocolate and its recent resurrection.
Daily KOS
Thrilling . . . Jacobsen draws out the complex global connections-and, often, corporate harms-underpinning the chocolate industry without losing sight of its pleasures . . . Readers will be eager to sink their teeth into this.
Publishers Weekly, starred review
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