Wild Chocolate
Across the Americas in Search of Cacao's Soul
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Wild Chocolate
Narrated by:
Sam Rushton
Buy Now for £13.80
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Narrated by:
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Sam Rushton
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By:
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Rowan Jacobsen
"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.©2024 Rowan Jacobsen (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic reviews
[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.
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.
[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.
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.
A delightful read, both for the travel writing and the deep dive into the art of chocolate and its recent resurrection.
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.
A spirited quest for the perfect cacao bean… a skilled food historian with a sharp eye for the economics of the delicious, [Jacobsen] also peppers his prose with interesting tidbits…A treat for literate, adventure-loving foodies, best accompanied by a bespoke chocolate bar.
An amazing adventure through forests, down rivers, and into the depths of history to uncover the beauty and culture of cacao, truly the food of the gods. Rowan Jacobsen is a master storyteller, and Wild Chocolate tells one of the best stories under the sun.
Chocolate is delicious, but not simple: It can be a source of impoverishment and deforestation, or a force for environmental and cultural regeneration; that’s a choice. Wild Chocolate provides an inspiring look at the people in the American tropics who are doing it right.
I learned so much! Wild Chocolate offers a rare intoxicating glimpse into a fascinating and notoriously opaque supply chain. Whether traveling up slender tributaries in the Amazon, bushwhacking through Central American rainforest, or providing front row seats to a master producer casting bars, Rowan Jacobsen transforms the quest for heritage chocolate into a swashbuckling adventure that will enrich every bite of chocolate you consume.
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