0:10

All right, Adrian, We're

0:13

at the corner of Columbus,

0:16

staring at the storefront, and I've brought

0:18

you here because I know you were on the

0:20

scene in Brooklyn circa two thousand

0:22

seven. Is that correct? Yeah,

0:25

that's correct. I'm in New York with Adrian

0:27

Anderson, the ultimate Brooklyn food Maymon.

0:30

Adrian has been working with chefs and food media

0:32

around New York for years, both making

0:34

the food and making it look

0:37

beautiful. I

0:39

was just getting out of restaurants

0:41

and starting to work as a food

0:43

stylist. It was maybe still living

0:46

in Williamsburg, maybe Bushwick around

0:48

that time. That's what I was hoping

0:50

for. Adrian co owned the studio

0:52

where all the food magazine shop and she did

0:54

a lot of the styling. So when I wanted

0:56

someone to walk me through the ultimate cautionary

0:59

tale in world of craft chocolate,

1:01

a tail that has a lot to do with the looks

1:03

and appearances, but bygone Brooklyn

1:06

era, I knew wh would ask. I

1:08

feel like we were at the beginning or

1:10

kind of the early stages of farm

1:13

to table, and I think that we were still

1:15

in this era of discovery

1:17

and excitement about

1:20

sourcing and honesty

1:22

and authenticity in

1:25

food, and in that

1:27

like budding good future suddenly

1:29

appears a new choppolate maker, Rygan

1:31

Williamsburg. The Mask

1:34

Brothers. Yeah, do you remember

1:36

when they first came onto your radar? I

1:39

can't pinpoint the exact moment.

1:43

It was more of a sort

1:45

of a creeping light leak at

1:47

the periphery of your consciousness. Stores

1:50

that had the cool food at

1:52

the time started carrying

1:55

masts and it was really

1:57

noticeable because the design the

2:00

rappers was so good. It really

2:02

was. Every bar looks like it was wrapped

2:04

in beautiful, old fashioned wallpaper

2:07

with minimal words. In an era

2:09

when most chocolate bars were still heavy on the

2:11

bling, these bars seemed handmade

2:14

and real, and the food world

2:17

gobbled them up. How do you make absolutely

2:19

incredible Valentine's Day chocolate?

2:22

Well, here at the Masked Brothers chocolate factory,

2:25

they start with organic CACW

2:27

beans, the Mass Brothers. It's very

2:29

artsy, fancy.

2:32

Just as important as that artsy packaging

2:34

of the bars was the packaging of

2:36

the brothers themselves, Rick and

2:38

Michael Mast, two young guys with

2:40

bushy red beards and Victorian clothing,

2:43

slinging burlap sacks of cocaw beans

2:45

for the eager cameras. Mass

2:47

Brothers chocolate in Brooklyn. Rick, your place

2:50

is a chocolate in urvana. Basically,

2:53

I love it. What makes you guys so different?

2:55

Bot making chocolate from scratch, all

2:57

in house. We're bringing in beans from

2:59

all around all over the world. Right, So

3:02

like Brooklyn itself, it's a chocolate bar that's

3:04

made up of things from all around the world. So

3:06

today we're gonna show you how we make our Brooklyn blend.

3:08

I love the showt T. The aesthetic

3:10

was ubiquitous at the time. It was inescapable

3:13

if you were, yeah,

3:15

the bearded Brooklyn bro selling,

3:19

selling cheese or slicking

3:22

cocktails. Suddenly,

3:24

the Masks had fawning coverage in the New York

3:26

Times and bond appetite, new shops

3:28

in London and l a and a global

3:30

spotlight as America's breakout Kraft chocolate

3:33

maker. Their glass walled Williamsburg

3:35

factory, where you could watch real live hipsters

3:37

making chocolate, became a tourist mecca.

3:40

But there was a story. There

3:42

was that big story. I'm sure you know what it was. I don't.

3:44

I don't remember. Yes, that's why I'm here.

3:47

Some people in the food world, the chocolate

3:50

world are calling them frauds,

3:54

the Milli Vanilli of chocolate, which

3:56

is a very strong thing to say.

3:58

They were re melting other kinds of chocolate

4:01

into their chocolate bars, especially in the early days

4:03

when they were claiming they were being too bar chocolate

4:05

alloys. That's just going against the purity

4:07

the nature of the very earnest looks

4:09

in the Big Beard's essentially, a

4:15

blogger for the website Dallas food dot org

4:18

broke the story that would bring the Mass Brothers

4:20

down. During their rise to fame,

4:23

when they were the poster beards for authenticity,

4:26

they weren't actually making some of their own chocolate.

4:29

They were buying it from other companies, melting

4:31

it down, pouring it into their own

4:33

molds, then wrapping it up in

4:35

old timey paper. At

4:37

first, the Masks denied everything, but

4:40

eventually they are forced to acknowledge that in

4:42

their early years they'd been re

4:45

melters. They claim they've

4:47

gone straight long ago, but the damage

4:49

was done. The shops disappeared,

4:51

the factory shuttered, and the Masks

4:54

themselves faded

4:57

away. That

4:59

felt the end after that, like the expossa

5:02

had come out. They

5:04

had been mocked relentlessly.

5:08

Everything closed down. It just it felt

5:10

like it was officially over, and

5:13

so we all thought. But now

5:15

here we are. Look up at

5:18

the storefront and tell me what I

5:20

see that We've got a hand painted

5:22

window that says masked Markets

5:25

established, and

5:28

there's a bunch of people inside.

5:31

It looks like the

5:33

two thousand and eleven Brooklyn aesthetic

5:36

is alive and well. Yes,

5:39

the masts are back, selling chocolate

5:41

and coffee and housewares and

5:44

body soaps in a squeaky clean

5:46

space that could double as a Williams Sonoma. The

5:49

remelters have reformed, but

5:52

don't be too quick to blame the masts re

5:54

melting style over substance.

5:57

For all the controversy in the world of big

5:59

Chocolate, it that's just business as usual.

6:02

But to understand just how bad it gets, we're

6:05

going to have to head into the

6:07

belly of the beast. From

6:12

Kaleidoscope and I Heeart podcasts. This

6:14

is Obsessions Wild Chocolate.

6:16

I'm Roman Jacobson, Chapter

6:19

four, Big Bad

6:21

Chocolate. All

6:47

right, so let's actually let's turn to We

6:49

are old foods. Here, we are our whole foods. Whole

6:51

foods in Brooklyn right on

6:55

on the planet one of them. I'm

6:57

with Clay Gordon, the creator and moderator

6:59

of the Chocolate Life dot com,

7:01

which is the world's biggest online community for

7:04

chocolate fans. Clay teaches chocolate

7:06

appreciation classes, he consults

7:08

with chocolate companies. He wrote A Great Guy

7:10

to Chocolate, and he was on the scene

7:12

when the masts had their big run. We

7:14

all wanted them

7:17

to succeed right because

7:19

they were m bringing

7:22

bad chocolate, to prefer from cheap

7:25

industrial chocolate into craft chocolate,

7:27

and um. They were

7:29

the people who were the gateway. People

7:32

came to them right and

7:34

they were the introduction. This was during

7:36

that strange stretch of the two thousands when

7:38

chocolate suddenly became virtuous instead

7:41

of a guilty treat. It pivoted into

7:43

a worldly earnest, possibly

7:45

even healthy luxury. The

7:48

candy aisles exploded with snazzy bars

7:50

advertising their high cocow percentage, socially

7:53

responsible business practices, and exotic

7:55

cocau surces. Of course,

7:57

the first chocolate makers to do such bars

7:59

really were tiny operations that walk

8:01

the walk, but it didn't take long

8:03

before they were joined in the virtuous section

8:06

by big chocolate. The

8:08

handful of giant corporations that dominate

8:11

the chocolate business. But to look

8:13

at the shelves and whole foods, you'd

8:15

never know it. It's really really

8:17

hard to understand what it

8:19

is we have presented here. So, for example, there's a

8:21

brand called Lilies, So

8:23

Lili's is known for sugar

8:25

free chocolate. When most

8:27

people look at

8:30

a bar of Lilies, they'll go, oh, it's fair trade,

8:33

right right. The other thing that's really

8:35

important to know is that the corporate parent

8:38

of Lilies is Hershey

8:41

Harsh Company. Yes, Lilies

8:43

is owned by Hershey, and it

8:45

should be known that Hershey is a name defendant

8:48

in a lawsuit having to

8:50

do with um knowingly

8:53

profiting from illegal labor in West

8:55

Africa.

9:00

Chocolate, as you may or may not know, has

9:02

some serious issues. U S senators

9:04

shared Brown and Ron Wyden, arguing

9:07

that there is evidence the Ivory Coast relies

9:10

on forced child labor to harvest

9:12

coco instead of attending school. These

9:14

children so through cocoa beans on a plantation.

9:17

The Washington Post reported in June

9:20

that more than two million children

9:22

were engaged in the practice on West

9:24

African cocoa farms. The

9:27

big chocolate companies don't actually own cacao

9:29

farms. They are many links

9:32

away at the other end of the supply chain,

9:35

and this makes it difficult to tell where the coco

9:37

originated. So their argument

9:39

is that, hey, we're just buying these beans from cargular

9:41

whoever. The reality

9:44

is they got a pretty dark They have

9:46

accepted responsibility, many of them

9:48

by signing Hrican Angle Protocol.

9:50

They know that these are issues. In

9:53

a wave of news stories exposed

9:55

the shocking amount of child trafficking and slavery

9:58

in the Chocolate Trade Act in two thousand

10:00

one, the US Congress responded, led

10:03

by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative

10:05

Elliott Angle. Together they introduced

10:07

the idea of slapping a label on chocolate

10:10

products indicating whether or not the product

10:12

was free of child slave labor. We

10:15

need a better commitment, a stronger

10:17

commitment from the chocolate industry

10:19

worldwide. That's Tom Harkin.

10:22

Families need to know that when they

10:24

buy chocolate in whatever form,

10:26

that a lot of that's being produced by

10:29

what is really an essence, child

10:32

slavery. To no one's surprise,

10:34

the industry freaked out. Chocolate

10:36

is a one billion dollar business and

10:39

a child slavery logo splashed across

10:41

every candy bar. Wouldn't exactly

10:43

be great for sales. Big Talcola said,

10:45

you know what, we don't need you

10:48

to enact loss. We will take care

10:50

of it ourselves. The problem ourselves,

10:53

and every time their self

10:55

imposed deadline approach, they

10:57

kicked the cocoa pot down the

10:59

road and they're five years. In

11:01

two thousand five, Big Chocolate promised to get child

11:03

labor out of the supply chain by two thousand

11:05

ten. In two thousand ten, they

11:08

said they could do it. They

11:11

said that they couldn't even trace where most of their

11:13

coco comes from.

11:16

The problem is that coco is a commodity

11:19

bought and sold by the shipload by traders

11:21

in New York and London, then stored in

11:23

giant warehouses until some company

11:26

buys it. Between the farmer who grows

11:28

it and the chocolate bar on the supermarket

11:30

shelf, it can change hands a

11:32

dozen times. It's nearly impossible

11:35

to trace that path. Not that

11:37

some companies aren't trying, all right, So

11:39

now you're playing a Tony's chacolon um.

11:43

They sold over a hundred million dollars in

11:45

chocolate. Tony's

11:48

is a Dutch company founded twenty years ago. With

11:50

a singular mission to eradicate slavery

11:53

from the chocolate supply chain. Tony's

11:55

groovy Piece of Love packaging gives

11:57

them this Ben and Jerry's vibe. But

11:59

there is a key difference. So Tony's

12:02

is not a chocolate maker. Tony's

12:04

is a marketing company, right. They

12:06

produce chocolate bars from

12:08

chocolate which is manufactured by someone else. So

12:11

the chocolate is manufactured for them by Barry Calibrats,

12:14

biggest biggest chocolate company in the world.

12:16

That's Barry Calibo, the goliath

12:18

of chocolate makers, with more than sixty

12:20

production facilities around the globe and

12:23

eight billion dollars in annual sales.

12:25

To their credit, Tony's purchases all

12:27

their beings from seven cooperatives in West Africa

12:30

that they ensure are free of slave labor, and

12:33

they pay a premium to do that. But the

12:35

fact that the largest chocolate maker in the world

12:37

is making all of their chocolate for them makes

12:39

things complicated. The

12:41

cocoa butter for this bar is

12:44

probably produced in the Calibut factory

12:47

in West Africa. And why

12:49

is that a problem? Well, Calibut

12:51

is one of the name defendants in the trafficking

12:54

victims protection reauthorization at lawsuit,

12:57

and so can we say that

12:59

they're actually working to eradicate

13:01

slavery in the

13:04

entire chocolate supply chain. They're

13:06

trying, for sure, but due

13:09

to its ties to Barry call About, Tony's

13:11

was removed from an important list of slavery

13:13

chocolate companies. And Tony's

13:15

isn't the only indie brand with ties to Big Chocolate.

13:18

Clay picked up another bar I want. I had some

13:20

history with chocolate up. These guys

13:22

have been around forever, so that was

13:25

like the first serious dark chocolate

13:27

I started buying in like thees. Part

13:30

of this is looking at labels, so

13:33

when you buy chocolate products, you can be sure

13:35

your purchase supports a better future for coco farmers

13:37

in their families. So chocolate

13:40

love Very kel about Choco

13:42

them too, Yes, I didn't know that. And

13:45

so what they're doing is this claim about

13:47

sustainable, social, and ethical is based

13:49

entirely on what Very kell About

13:51

is claiming that they're doing on

13:54

the farm. So they're they bary calibut,

13:56

They're like, you're sustainable and ethical? Right?

13:59

He kept going other brands that you might

14:01

see Justin's. Yeah, for sure.

14:03

Also Penetrate owned

14:06

by Hormle Foods, the Endangered

14:08

Species chocolate company. They don't make

14:10

chocolate. They are a marketing company. The

14:12

chocolate is made for them by another company. Does

14:14

anybody on the shelf make their own chocolate?

14:17

I believe well, I

14:19

believe well theo they're

14:22

the only ones. By the

14:24

time Clay had gone to the whole shelf, it

14:26

was clear that what the Mass brothers had done

14:29

it was just standard practice in the weird world

14:31

of chocolate, and Clay says,

14:33

the chicanery goes all the way to

14:35

the top. Support you to know the Persha Hershi

14:37

does not manufacture chocolate at all

14:39

at all anymore. They are a candy

14:42

company, not a chocolate company, and so the

14:44

chocolate for them. If you go to if you actually go

14:46

to Pershey, Pennsylvania, you will

14:48

not find chocolate manufacturing anymore. Um.

14:50

They buy their chocolate in from big producers,

14:53

car gil companies like that, big producers.

14:55

Um. When you go to Hershey Park and you're

14:57

like, ye, they're not They're not making chocolate.

15:00

That's also if

15:03

this makes you want to break free from the chocolate

15:05

empire completely, you're not alone.

15:08

I just felt inherently like there

15:10

was just something really messed

15:13

up with the system itself. But

15:15

don't join the resistance

15:17

instead, and I wanted to

15:19

build an alternative system.

15:23

Rad shotgun with a rebel commander on a risky

15:25

mission. After the break,

15:42

Hey everyone, I want to taste of some real

15:44

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15:47

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15:49

moral conundrums. We got you covered.

15:51

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15:54

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15:56

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15:59

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16:01

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16:04

Just visit www

16:06

dot Stettler dash Chocolate dot

16:08

com to order your wild Chocolate today

16:11

link in the show notes. So

16:24

what's the lifespan on one of these

16:26

trucks doing doing this kind of work?

16:29

You managed to keep it going infinited,

16:32

Infinited with the right mechanic. I'm

16:35

with Emily Stone and Diane Coy.

16:37

Emily is the founder of Uncommon Cacao,

16:39

which acts as a matchmaker for five thousand

16:41

small farmers in twelve countries and

16:43

hundreds of being to bar chocolate makers in the US.

16:46

And Europe. Diane is the new managing

16:48

director of the Belize Business. She's

16:50

a Kechi Maya who grew up in the area and

16:52

spent time as a kid harvesting cocao with her

16:54

parents. We're riding in a rusty

16:56

thirty three year old Ford f two fifty through

16:59

the back roads of Belie, buying kakao from

17:01

farmers. So everything we're

17:03

seeing as my as part of the Maya Mountains or

17:06

yeah, everything here this is sort of the southern

17:08

tip and then extends up towards Kyo. Really

17:12

beautiful. How many communities are

17:14

resourcing kakao from that vand UM tent

17:16

to eat twenty eight communities in the

17:18

Biomos. In

17:21

the late two thousand's, Emily was living

17:23

in Boston working on the campaign to pressure

17:25

Hershey to address its child slavery problem.

17:28

But the more she watched big chocolates say all

17:30

the right things, the more she realized the

17:32

system was never going to change from within. There's

17:35

no reason for chocolate to

17:37

be causing poverty. Um.

17:40

It is the leftover inheritance

17:43

of colonialism and of

17:46

a world in which slavery was legal. So

17:50

Emily decided to help build a new system

17:57

Her vision was to act as a matchmaker for

17:59

small farms and being to bar chocolate

18:01

makers, to cut out those twelve

18:03

layers of intermediaries and deliver more

18:05

money to the farmers and better beans

18:08

to the chocolate makers. And she knew

18:10

the place to start was the Americas, which had the

18:12

old varieties of cacao that the high end chocolate

18:14

community craved and no system

18:16

for getting it to market in good condition. In

18:19

two thousand ten, she moved to Belize and started

18:21

talking to farmers. They told her

18:24

they needed an easier way to sell their beings at

18:26

a better price. She said, got

18:28

it, So she bought a beat up truck and

18:30

offered to pick up their beings right at the farm.

18:33

Then she built a professional fermentation station

18:35

which would help her charge more for these improved beings.

18:38

Within a few years, farmers were getting

18:40

twice the price for their coca and

18:42

My Mountain Beings had become famous.

18:46

But police alone was a drop in the bucket.

18:48

If she really wanted to build a more just chocolate

18:50

industry, she needed to expand, and

18:53

she knew where to go. I was hearing from

18:55

people and police, you know. Oh yeah, my cousins in Guatemala

18:58

they have like have you ever been

19:00

to Guatemalad? And I had it

19:02

good over there, and then I get the bus

19:05

and you know, it was just kind of like asking her. I'm like, okay,

19:07

how did I get from here to here? Anytime I

19:09

got to the next bus station and everyone's

19:11

looking at me, like, who the f

19:14

are you? Someone like asked

19:16

me. They're like, what do you here? I'm

19:18

here to you know, I'm here to look at cacao. And

19:21

all of a sudden they all were like cocaw. I

19:23

was like, yeah, they've got we have a lot of cacao. It's

19:25

like, oh great, That's what I'm here

19:27

for. And literally, as the minibus

19:30

was like making its way up the mountain,

19:33

we were stopping at every single person on

19:35

the bus as cacao, farm and student.

19:39

She's meeting everyone in the community and learning

19:41

how important they were to the history of chocolate.

19:44

They were kept chi Maya direct descendants

19:46

of the people who had introduced chocolate to Europe

19:48

when they sign a friendly delegation to the Spanish

19:51

court bearing

19:53

beans from these very hillsides. Emily

19:56

had stumbled into the heart of chocolate, an

19:58

unbroken lineage going back of

20:00

years, but that didn't make their

20:02

situation any easier. Their

20:05

market were um

20:07

coyotes, which are basically intermediaries

20:10

that drive around these back roads with

20:12

a stack of cash and a handgun and they

20:14

buy and a scale and they buy whatever

20:17

the farmers have to sell, whether that's corn,

20:19

beans, cardamom, chili,

20:21

cinnamon, cocao, allspice.

20:25

Um, there's no transparency

20:27

around where that coca is going. There's no technical

20:29

assistance, and um

20:32

there's no fermentation. It's all washed cocao.

20:34

So yeah, these producers were left without a market.

20:37

This was her dream scenario. The

20:39

cocow varieties turned out to be excellent old

20:42

ones, but the cocao wasn't being

20:44

fermented at all. The farmers

20:46

were just washing the pulp off as soon as they opened

20:48

the pods, drying the beans, and selling

20:50

them as fast as possible. The

20:52

delicious flavors that emerge with fermentation

20:55

were never being given a chance to develop, and

20:57

it was all due to the dysfunctional market. The

21:00

coyotes were going to pay the same super low price

21:02

no matter what. So Emily jumped

21:04

on the opportunity. She moved to Guatemala,

21:07

taught the farmers how to ferment and drive properly

21:10

bought the cacao for twice the going rate and

21:12

sold it directly to her growing list of being

21:14

too bar clients. But the coyotes

21:17

did not take this lying down. It's

21:19

been a huge challenge for locally. I mean it's

21:21

been there've been security issues they've been so

21:24

it has what kind

21:25

of like what what kind of challenge

21:27

or what kind of security? There

21:31

were physical threats made

21:33

to association members. The

21:39

battle with the coyotes came to a head after

21:41

the government arranged to build a new fermentation

21:44

and drawing center for the farmers Association.

21:47

Emily wasn't directly involved, but

21:49

she'd promised to buy the cacao, which

21:51

was a key to the deal. But one local

21:53

coyote was particularly unhappy

21:55

about losing his turf, and when

21:57

the government representatives came to sign the paper

22:00

or work, they met a most unwelcome

22:03

welcoming committee. Basically, this

22:05

disgruntled guy and his family

22:07

surrounded the building where this signing was

22:09

happening, armed with machetes

22:12

and threatened that if they signed it like

22:14

there would be violence, and so they

22:16

left without signing. The project never happens. The

22:19

bad blood continued for a couple of years, and

22:21

the farmers warned Emily and her team not

22:24

to visit the coyote, and sort

22:26

of his family members were like, you

22:28

know, if those people come, it's

22:31

not it's not going to be good.

22:34

But the fermentation center got built in the neighboring

22:36

community, and once it became clear

22:38

to all the farmers how much better the new system

22:40

was, they made it very clear to the coyote

22:43

that the times they were changing.

22:46

We have found that over time

22:48

there's there is a circle of trust

22:51

and security that is established by the farmers

22:53

themselves, and that

22:56

the consequences for anyone

22:58

who interferes will be high.

23:01

Since then, Guatemala has become a prized

23:03

source of cocao in the craft chocolate world. But

23:06

that doesn't mean it's an easy business. Bullets,

23:09

razors, nails,

23:12

cement, you name it, it's been found in

23:14

a cocao bag. And sometimes Emily

23:16

finds herself thinking more like Walter White

23:18

than Willy Wanka. So I don't

23:21

like guns, and I've never wanted us to

23:23

have gotten to me. The idea of having a gun owned

23:25

by the company out in the company vehicle, someone

23:28

from the company, you know, having the ability

23:30

to use a gun is terrifying.

23:33

But Guatemala is one of the poorest and

23:35

most dangerous countries in the world, and

23:38

a shipping container of cacao is worth

23:40

tens of thousands of dollars um.

23:43

There have been instances of coffee containers

23:45

being robbed, um, you know, violently

23:47

in Guatemala, and so obviously want to ensure

23:50

that our cocao does not get

23:52

stolen on its way to the port for export.

23:55

Uh So, yeah, we've got We've always got guys with guns

23:57

following our containers. I

24:04

hope by now it's abundantly clear that making

24:07

great chocolate from responsibly sourced

24:09

beans is really, really

24:11

hard, even when you're not dealing

24:13

with guns and charlatan's. Sometimes

24:16

you could do everything right and still

24:18

fail. I thought this

24:20

was gonna taste amazing,

24:23

and this was like gonna be like

24:25

the like the gold

24:29

of the forest, just

24:31

asked Louisa Abraham, the young Brazilian

24:33

chocolate maker who began working with the Santo Daimi

24:35

ayahuasca cult in the Amazon. Louisa

24:38

fell in love with the people. She paid fair

24:40

prices for their cocao. She did

24:42

everything right. It

24:45

ended up being so crappy. It

24:47

was just horrible what to do

24:49

when you've just made the worst chocolate in the

24:52

world. After the break, I

25:19

I had fallen in love with all

25:21

the story, with all like the like

25:24

it's so poetic, like crossing Brazil

25:27

to go to the forest, go

25:30

deep into the forest to get

25:32

the wild cacao savage

25:35

um and and then to bring it

25:37

back and to make chocolate. It was just so enchanting

25:41

for me. After

25:43

meeting the Sciento dim a cow collectors

25:45

on the Peruce River, Louisa Abraham

25:47

devoted herself to making chocolate with the wild cocaw

25:49

of the Amazon. I want to do

25:52

something with a purpose. I want to

25:54

impact others life. I

25:57

want to like believe my mark on

25:59

this. So

26:01

she and her dad bought twenty kilos of cocao for

26:04

the co op, stuffed it into their extra

26:06

luggage, and headed back to South Paula.

26:08

She built a micro chocolate factory in her parents

26:10

utility closet, and she roasted

26:13

the beans in her tiny oven and blew

26:15

off the shells with a hair dryer and ground

26:17

them into a silky paste in her mini roller and

26:19

made her very first batch of wild Brazilian

26:21

chocolate. And when it had cooled

26:24

She lifted a piece in her hand, placed

26:26

it on her tongue, closed her

26:28

eyes, and that the essence of

26:30

the Amazon wash over her, and

26:33

everything tasted so awful

26:36

for me. It was just so funky

26:39

taste, so like ammonia, and

26:41

and so like unnatural.

26:45

She ran it by some others to make sure it wasn't just her.

26:47

I gave it to my chefs and to my colleagues

26:50

too to try, and they were

26:52

like mocking of me, like you

26:54

went all the way too could to

26:57

get this piece of you know, like

27:01

naturally. Louisa assumed that she was the problem,

27:03

and I was like, okay, maybe I am

27:05

the one doing it, doing something different.

27:07

So I changed the rulest profile. I

27:09

changed, like the

27:12

how I was. I changed even

27:14

I even my sugar. I changed. I

27:17

changed everything, and nothing would work.

27:21

For the next three years, she kept making

27:23

chocolate with the paruce beans because she was

27:26

determined to make it work, but she just couldn't

27:28

get the taste dry. And while she managed

27:30

to get the chocolate into stores around Brazil on

27:32

the strength of the Wild Cocows Argent story,

27:35

nobody ever reordered. So what

27:37

do you do when you put everything on the line to

27:39

become a great chocolate maker, and you find

27:41

yourself making terrible chocolate, Well

27:45

you need a goog, someone who could bind

27:47

deep expertise with almost spiritual

27:49

insight. So Louisa summoned

27:51

up her courage and sent a bar to

27:54

our old friend Mark Christian.

27:57

It was a qualified disaster.

28:00

We don't need to get into all the particular

28:02

details of flaws. They were manifold, you

28:05

know. Yep, her bar sucked

28:07

and he told her so. But hang on,

28:09

there was a shiny silver lining. You

28:11

can see through the beans right,

28:14

No matter how poorly they're prepped,

28:16

whatever their post harvest is and so forth,

28:20

the d NA, the backbone of those

28:23

seeds is still there.

28:27

And what struck me about that cacao

28:30

and that bar she made It was good

28:32

enough that I thought this

28:34

was the ultimate dark milk

28:37

chocolate, potentially without

28:40

any dairy whatsoever. That's

28:42

how much it was cream puffing the oral

28:44

chamber. Sorry, if you've never

28:47

had your oral chamber cream puffed, you

28:49

might not be familiar with the experience. But

28:51

in the world of chocolate, or at least

28:54

the world of Mark Christian, that's a good

28:56

thing. Um, all

28:58

that you know, earthen

29:01

milk dairy cream,

29:04

and who doesn't like cream? I mean, you know,

29:08

you know, everybody

29:10

likes cream. Everybody likes mama. Right,

29:13

So it was great, but

29:15

it was masked. I mean, you you had

29:17

you could get the cream, but

29:19

you were getting a lot of other detritus

29:22

with it, like what you

29:24

were getting the basics, such as um,

29:28

cardboard, chalk, maybe

29:31

even the black board itself was

29:33

throwing. It was

29:36

all there. In other words, it's

29:38

not you and it's not your beans

29:40

either. They seem kind of great, but

29:43

what's up with that fermentation? I told

29:45

them there's something there in

29:48

that valley. You don't let it go,

29:51

you know, Let's get this right. Mark's recommendation

29:53

was fix that fermentation, get

29:56

rid of all that funky ammonia, and you might have

29:58

something really special on your hands. So

30:00

how do you fix that? Well,

30:05

remember Harvey kit Tell's character in pulp fiction,

30:07

the Cleaner. I

30:10

saw problems. You need that guy

30:12

for cacao. It's funny. I almost feel

30:15

guilty for showing up and be like, seriously,

30:17

this is what you guys do. And he exists.

30:20

Dan o'darty lives in Hawaii, but he spends

30:22

most of his time zipping around the planet saving

30:25

Cacal farmers from their own mistakes. Mark

30:27

told Louisa that Dan could make her problems go away.

30:30

So Louisa invited Dan to her factory and

30:32

showed him the cruise beans right

30:34

away from the aroma, but also the very

30:36

dark, almost black, and the color. I knew that

30:38

there were problems. I

30:40

mean, over from Kao has this funky

30:44

you know barn ardi. Um.

30:46

I mean I describe it as you know, somewhat manure,

30:49

you know, like like like cow manure smells

30:51

um, I mean it tastes rotten.

30:55

So he started with some questions. How

30:57

often do you harvest the trees? What level of ripeness

30:59

do you select? What is the lag time

31:02

between cutting a fruit from the tree opening

31:04

it? Is there a delay between opening

31:06

it and putting it into a box to ferment? How

31:09

often do you turn it? How

31:12

long do you ferment it? And how do you dry

31:14

it? And and there's even more substeps,

31:17

and in Perus, the answer to pretty much

31:19

every one of those questions was wrong.

31:22

These boats are going

31:24

up and down the river and collecting

31:27

whole pods. Some guys would take

31:29

their pods, collect them in the forest and put them on the

31:31

river banks and they just roast

31:33

in the sun. Not good. Basically,

31:36

it was all amiss. The ayahuasca cult

31:38

was picking overripe pods, and then they were

31:40

waiting too long to open the pods, and then

31:42

they were over fermenting the seeds. And

31:45

Dan had to break the news to them. You know, you

31:47

have to be gentle when you tell people.

31:49

I mean, essentially, what you've been doing all this time

31:51

is wrong. We're going to change pretty

31:54

much every step. Every step.

31:56

Pick the pods earlier, open them right

31:58

away, get those beans in the fermentation

32:01

boxes, unplugged the holes in the bottoms

32:03

of the boxes so they can drain, turn

32:05

the piles every day, keep them

32:07

covered with banana leaves. But they did

32:09

it all, and when the new beans were ready,

32:12

Louisa tried not to get her hopes up. She

32:15

just made her chocolate like always. Then.

32:18

I remember when I first cat

32:20

the chocolate in my mouth, it

32:24

was like it was like

32:26

a drug. Oh

32:32

it was amazing. I mean, has like straight

32:34

up dried blueberry notes like I

32:36

had. People tasted. They didn't I

32:39

didn't prime them with anything, and

32:41

they were like, oh my god, it tastes like you round

32:43

dried blueberries into it. Finally,

32:46

Louisa had a fantastic new chocolate on her

32:48

hands, and her company took off. She

32:51

added three other chocolates to her line, each

32:53

coming from a different Amazonian community with its

32:55

own wild cocoutries, and

32:58

as it turned out, she had dialed her

33:00

skills just in time, because

33:02

the kind of opportunity every Beamed Bar chocolate

33:04

maker dreams of was about to come

33:06

her way, and he was going to take

33:09

everything She had to pull it off.

33:18

Next week on Obsessions Wild

33:20

Chocolate, Man, you must have been

33:23

furious at a lot of people. I

33:26

had a little It

33:30

was a sectional rage and

33:32

a pure rage. I would you

33:35

know, with a gun in my hands, that would have killed

33:37

some people maybe, yeah,

33:41

Vulcar Layman. After years

33:43

of dodging bullet after bullet in the jungle, he

33:45

was about to take one right in the heart.

33:54

Wild Chocolate is a Kaleidoscope production

33:57

with I Heart Podcasts, posted and reported

33:59

by me Row Jacobson and produced by

34:01

Shane McKeon at Nice Marmat Media,

34:04

Edited by Kate Osborne and Mangesh haut

34:06

A Kudor, sound design and mixing by

34:08

Soundboard. Original music composition

34:10

by Spencer Stevenson a k a Botton

34:13

production help from Baheeny Shorty

34:15

from My Heart. Our executive producers are Katrina

34:17

Norvelle and Nikki Etre. Special

34:20

thanks to Laura Mayor Costas, lnos Ozwalash

34:23

and Aaron Kaufman, Will Pearson,

34:25

codel Burn, Bob Pittman, Daria

34:28

Daniel and the team at Stetler who are helping

34:30

us make a very special chocolate of our own. That's

34:33

right, We're working with Louisa at others

34:35

to protect the rainforest and make delicious

34:37

Amazonian chocolate. Visit www

34:40

dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com

34:43

to taste it for yourself. That's www

34:46

Dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot

34:48

com. And if you want to hear more

34:50

of this type of content, nothing is more important

34:52

to the creators here at Kaleidoscope than subscribers,

34:55

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34:57

the love wherever you listen.