0:15

To get to Vulcan Lehman's compound in the Amazon

0:18

kept really want together there. For

0:20

me, that involved a red eye from Miami

0:23

to Santa Cruz, Olivia's biggest city, then

0:25

a puddle jumper to a town called Trinidad,

0:28

a sweaty night there, and then nine

0:31

grueling hours in a collectivo taxi

0:34

squeeze between farm hands and crying

0:36

babies, hammering over washboard

0:38

rows at thirty miles per hour, which is about

0:40

twenty miles per hour too fast. At

0:43

last, I got dropped off at Vulkar's place.

0:47

Hello. Hello, it's

0:49

changed since my visit twelve years ago. For our river

0:51

trip. Folcus built himself a crazy

0:53

new house, all screen, no walls.

0:57

A few feet away, there's an out house with tree

0:59

frogs in the toilet, a workshop

1:01

with a generator, and a big greenhouse for fermenting

1:03

cacao. There's papayetrees

1:05

and bananas, and a tiny white local

1:08

chili called goose anita. It looks

1:10

like little worms. They're brutally

1:12

hot. The vulgar munches them like popcorn.

1:15

Surrounding it all, of course, are the cocaudries,

1:18

acres of them. Poker calls

1:20

the place tranquila DoD. It means tranquility

1:23

in Spanish, and most of the time

1:26

the name fits most

1:28

of the time. So um, if you

1:30

can, you runt down all the things to

1:32

watch out for. I'm wandering around.

1:35

I always tell the people

1:37

when they come, please don't touch anything. I

1:41

think National

1:43

Geographic and all Animal planet they

1:46

give a false perspective. There

1:48

are people, you know, gripping crocodiles

1:50

and snakes and whatnot, and so

1:52

don't touch the crocodiles or the snakes.

1:55

Is in general, there's

1:58

actually a lot of crocodiles, not a touch.

2:00

The place is filled with them.

2:02

Technically, the ones in the Amazon are called caymans,

2:05

not crocodiles, but I know a

2:07

crocodile smile when I see one. The

2:09

big ones in Bolivia can be more than twelve ft

2:12

long, and Folkers says to stay

2:14

away from them because they like to

2:16

charge people. But the smaller

2:18

ones, well, he's caught a five footer

2:21

in honor of our reunion, and now

2:23

he's prepping it for dinner. We have like

2:26

rips and tail. The

2:28

tail will eat raw with lime juice like svich.

2:31

The ribs get fried not too long, so

2:33

it stays juicy inside, its wanderful.

2:37

When you're talking about wild chocolate. This

2:39

is ground zero. Tranquilidad

2:41

is where the movement was born. The beans

2:43

from these trees produced the first run of Cruise

2:46

Savage and set off the gold rush to find

2:48

more last ca cow with wicked new flavors.

2:50

I've come to work the harvest, to learn the arts

2:53

of picking and fermenting, to understand

2:55

on a deeper level, where great chocolate

2:57

comes from.

3:04

The Last time I was here a dozen years ago, the

3:06

trip had gone from bad to absurd, but

3:08

it ended well. Volker lined up lots

3:11

of new sources of cacao. Cruise Evage

3:13

was a hit, and Volker became a legend

3:15

in the fine chocolate community. And

3:17

then something went

3:20

terribly wrong. I've only heard

3:22

the details from a distance, but just like

3:24

those golden pods, were cursed. Yeah.

3:32

I had no intention to dig into

3:35

this jungle. Actually, I

3:37

I fell into the trap. It

3:42

was just looking for some stupid

3:45

kaka in the forest. I wasn't even

3:47

planning on this. Yeah,

3:50

well you'll

3:53

see what happened. For

3:59

thirty years, has been chasing that grail, always

4:01

believing it was one step away, always

4:04

believing that with just a little more organization,

4:07

the Amazon would fall into place. And

4:12

of course he was just the latest in a long

4:14

line of outsiders to believe that he

4:16

could make sense of the chaos, from

4:18

the Spanish gold hunters and the Jesuits,

4:22

to the rubber barons of the eight hundreds and

4:25

they explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared

4:27

in Still Seeking

4:29

the Lost City of z And

4:31

to the characters in Werner Herzog's Amazon

4:33

films, and even Herzog himself,

4:36

who seems to have gone at least partially insane

4:38

trying to make those movies. What

4:41

are your plans when this movie is all over? What are you gonna

4:43

be doing? I

4:45

shouldn't make movies anymore. Should

4:49

go to a lunatic asylum right

4:51

away. These

4:54

dreamers always think they're close, and

4:57

every time the same thing happens

4:59

there, attempts to make it work on their terms

5:02

fail. From

5:06

Kaleidoscope and I Heeart podcasts. This

5:09

is Obsessions, Wild Chocolate.

5:11

I'm Roman Jacobson, Chapter

5:15

two, Olivia for Dummies. Long

5:28

before he ever saw a cowpot, Volker

5:30

Lehman was a little boy in Berlin with a green thumb.

5:33

His father was an army veteran and a coal miner

5:35

battling exhaustion and PTSD.

5:38

So he came from work and then he

5:40

went for one or two hours into the garden.

5:43

Yeah, and that helped him also

5:45

to maybe forget

5:47

a little about about the harsh

5:50

conditions in the coal mine. By

5:53

the time he was five, Folker was gardening

5:55

right alongside him. I had to pull

5:57

out the weeds and well,

6:00

sometimes I missed and put on the

6:02

carrots.

6:05

Education, but he never much liked the German

6:08

climate. After high school, he took

6:10

a trip to Latin America and compared

6:12

to the gray horizons of post war Germany,

6:15

it was like stepping into a technicolor wonderland.

6:18

I was intrigued by the climb, at the

6:20

music, the food. It's like

6:22

you feel friendly. But

6:24

it wasn't just the culture around farming. Volka

6:27

was amazed by the power of tropical plants,

6:29

the way they grew so ferociously, and

6:31

the incredible amount of food and medicine they could

6:33

produce. One he

6:36

decided to devote his life to them.

6:38

He knocked around the tropics for a few years doing

6:40

development work, and by the nineties

6:42

he'd found his way to Bolivia. The German

6:44

government had a program to try to get Bolivia's

6:46

farmers to switch from coca to

6:49

less controversial crops, and Vulgar's

6:51

job was to teach the farmers how to work with the

6:53

new ones. Bolivians consider

6:55

coca their most sacred plant. The leaves

6:58

are chewed daily for stamina and

7:00

stimulation, but they're also the source

7:02

of cocaine. And the ninety nineties

7:04

Olivia was awash and the stuff. Folker

7:09

told me about those strange days as we sat

7:11

in his jungle home. No, but Santa

7:13

Cruz was like Carnival

7:16

in real seven actually

7:19

on Bolivia, and Santa Cruz was the

7:22

expansion project from

7:24

the Colombians because

7:26

they needed more for you, you know that

7:29

is you being meat being

7:32

America. They needed more cocaine

7:35

to feed our insatiable appetite, more

7:37

than they could produce in Columbia, right, right,

7:40

So first they moved into Peru, and

7:43

then that wasn't enough. Then they moved

7:45

over and to

7:47

to Bolivia. People are coming

7:49

from Columbia by plane, small planes,

7:52

bringing even their bands with bringing

7:55

the band. Yeah, yes,

7:57

you heard that right. If you're a Colombian drug

8:00

hiller on the Bolivian range, how do you party

8:02

without your local tunes. There

8:09

was a small town, Santa Ananda, Yukuma,

8:12

which was then the hot spot. And

8:15

did you ever have to worry about crossing those

8:17

guys? So sometimes you sit next to one and

8:19

he would not he would invite you. Oh you're

8:21

American, you know where you come from. He wants to

8:23

know where we are if you're not from d A

8:25

right right, And then he he puts

8:28

a bottle of whiskey into you. And then you start

8:30

singing, you know, and and then he

8:32

he says, oh, this this guy is harmless.

8:35

So as Volker continued his work,

8:37

he found himself caught between his new friends,

8:40

the farmers and the d e a. Santa

8:42

ana was known as a ranching town, but it was

8:44

also the heart of Olivia's cocaine network, because,

8:48

as it turned out, the ranchers and the traffickers

8:51

could be one and the same. Because

8:53

when you have a farm, when you have a farm

8:55

here, you don't have a plane, yeah normally

8:57

and now to over watch anty

9:01

hectares and

9:04

and you have to travel no roads.

9:07

The natural thing is to buy

9:09

yourself as cessna. Then

9:11

the pilot can transport some some packages.

9:14

You know what means, you know, makes some side

9:16

business, and of course that side

9:19

business turned out to be a lot more lucrative than

9:21

cattle. Soon Bolivia's ranchers

9:23

were saddle deep in the drug business,

9:25

and everyone knew it. On the night of

9:27

June, the

9:29

d e A took action. Dozens

9:31

of helicopters carrying hundreds of anti drug

9:33

agents from Bolivia and the United States swooped

9:36

down on Santana. According

9:38

to the d e A, agents destroyed

9:40

fifteen cocaine labs hidden in the little

9:42

town and confiscated dozens of planes

9:44

along with hundreds of kilos of coke. But

9:47

they met stiff resistance from the townspeople, who

9:49

stormed the airport and surrounded the helicopters,

9:52

chanting kill the Yankees, leaving

9:54

no uncertainty as to where their loyalties lay.

9:58

Vulgar tried hard to persuade farmers to switch crops,

10:00

but eventually he burned out bananas,

10:03

pineapple, hearts of palm.

10:05

None of the alternative crops could ever compete

10:07

with cocamine. He

10:11

felt useless, so he went back

10:13

to his original obsession, studying the

10:15

local plants, and before long he

10:18

was searching the rainforest for the next big

10:20

thing, a plant with global appeal,

10:23

Like a vegetal talent scout. He needed

10:25

a buzzy new client, and he

10:28

found one. But it wasn't cocao,

10:30

not yet. It was brazil nuts,

10:33

one of the great treats of the Amazon. The

10:35

territory of Bolivia was always the main

10:38

source of the main spot of the brazil

10:41

nuts. Always because

10:43

Brazil chopped theres down or even before no,

10:46

it's yeah and um.

10:48

The nuts were always sold through Brazil

10:51

and this is why they called brazil nuts. But they always

10:53

came from Bolivia. Bolivia nuts really yeah.

10:56

Brazil Nut trees are these giants of the rainforest,

10:59

towering over the rest of the canopy. They

11:01

have these little coconuts the size of bocci balls

11:03

clinging to their trunks, and each one is filled

11:05

with delicious nuts. The trees are

11:07

kind of perfect for developing a rainforest economy,

11:10

wild, sustainable, delicious,

11:13

but on their own they aren't exactly

11:15

a big ticket item. Bulker needed

11:17

a sex air product, and he thought he might have

11:19

the perfect candidate, a lady from the

11:22

Chimana tribe. She showed

11:24

me in the wild cacao. A

11:26

few years earlier. Bulker had been exploring the jungle

11:28

for valuable new plants. The natural

11:30

people to ask where the Shimani, a group of hunter

11:33

gatherers who still lived off the wild,

11:35

and one old Shimani woman in particular, was

11:38

known for her expertise. That friend introduced

11:41

me. Ah, he said, I

11:43

I know Chimana and

11:45

they have some cacaw that might be of

11:47

your interest. Let's go, and

11:50

not just any cacao, wild cacao,

11:53

something Vulka had never come across in his development

11:55

work. So they went to the forest and

11:57

found the old woman. She lived in intent

12:00

made from sticks and palm thatch, and

12:02

she knew all the useful plants in the forest. They

12:04

still can see her, you

12:07

know, she was really tiny. They

12:09

asked if she could show them the wild cocow and she

12:11

said sure, and she led them down

12:13

a footpath into the forest. So we were

12:15

walking and I was behind

12:17

her sawing. I saw

12:20

her hair like a nest,

12:22

and her hair was

12:25

a little monkey. It was a

12:27

little pet monkey. And Falker could

12:29

not stop looking at it. There are tiny

12:31

monkeys her right, and

12:34

she got one, and I

12:36

was following her and looking at the monkey all

12:38

the time, and all of a sudden, she

12:40

she stopped and showed me

12:43

a cow tree. And

12:54

here it is the argent moment of

12:56

the man who's going to make wild chocolate famous.

12:59

In the Hollywood version of this tale, the

13:01

wise woman hands him the yellow pod and

13:04

he stares transfixed, like Indiana

13:06

Jones gazing at the golden idol. Here

13:09

is the answer. He seeks, the thing that is going

13:11

to bring sustainable agriculture to the Amazon

13:14

and transform the world of chocolate. Does

13:16

he break open the pod, sniff the

13:18

fragrant seeds, and hold it up like

13:20

the Holy Grail. I wasn't

13:22

really interested in the tree much,

13:25

really, so oh, yeah, I

13:27

see colcohol. Okay,

13:31

Nope. All he could think about was the monkey.

13:34

And then my friend said, yeah, do

13:36

you think this is something? I said, I

13:38

have no idea,

13:42

But he tucked the experience away in the back of his mind,

13:45

and when he was searching for a sexy partner to

13:47

inrobe his Brazilian nuts, he unpacked

13:49

it. And we will too after

13:52

the break, Welcome

14:13

back to wild Chocolate. So

14:16

we we put this Oh

14:19

what oh you call this? What's

14:21

what's greater? Greater? Yeah?

14:26

In La Paz and Santa Cruz and the other

14:28

cities of Bolivia. You see rustic chocolate

14:30

for sale in the markets, grainy brown

14:32

patties shaped my hand, just like he'saly

14:34

in Mexico. It's an old tradition

14:37

in Bolivia, and they used stone on

14:39

stone blinders. Yeah, so that's how

14:41

it's still done here. This

14:44

is the same, maybe fifty

14:47

years ago. Amazing. But

14:50

if you bite into one of these patties by itself,

14:52

you're in for a bad time. Some of

14:54

it tastes burnt, some tastes

14:56

like blue cheese, and it all crumbles

14:59

like dirt. For the locals,

15:01

that doesn't really matter because it all gets

15:03

drunk. Is hot chocolate with enough sugar to cover

15:05

up any off flavors. For

15:08

Vulcan, though, this chocolate wouldn't cut it.

15:10

There was no way he could cut his precious brazil

15:12

nuts and this stuff and pass it off as a gourmet

15:15

item. He needed better chocolate, but

15:18

he couldn't find any. He considered

15:20

giving up on the whole idea, but

15:23

then he found a tiny, run down chocolate

15:25

shop in a back alley of Lapase. The

15:28

proprietor was an eighty five year old Jewish

15:30

man who could escape the Warsaw Ghetto during

15:32

World War two. And he he was like

15:35

a very traditional chocolate lover

15:38

and had a small um

15:40

choco factory. Jewish

15:46

artisans have been at the heart of Europ's chocolate

15:48

making tradition since the days of the Spanish court,

15:51

and this old guy knew the traditional well. When

15:53

Vulgar tasted his chocolate, he could not believe

15:56

his daste buds. It was not

15:59

terrible, but why Vulker

16:02

put the questions to him, and it turned

16:04

out the guy was doing what European chocolate

16:06

makers have always done when stuck with funky beans.

16:09

They beat the warm coco mass for hour after

16:11

hour in a machine to blow off

16:14

as much of the off flavors as possible.

16:16

It wasn't perfect, but it was enough for

16:18

Vulca to get his first real sense of the beans

16:21

behind the funk, and he liked what he sensed.

16:24

Behind the char and the cheese, there

16:26

was something beautiful at

16:30

heart. Vulcan is an engineer. When he sees

16:32

a system, he thinks he's running poorly, that

16:35

could be so much better with just a few

16:37

tweaks. He can't resist. So

16:40

now he couldn't help wonder if the funk

16:42

was built into the beans, or if there was a way

16:44

to get the beauty without the beast, And

16:47

there was only one way to answer that. He

16:49

had to go to the source, and that meant

16:51

a scruffy town called Trinidad, where

16:53

everything the jungle produced, from cocaw

16:55

to cocaine could be found for sale.

16:58

Tread is Uh is the center

17:01

of trade, and then people

17:04

running up and down the river with and

17:07

and doing batta batta

17:09

business. Traders would spend weeks

17:11

in the jungle and then paddle into Trinidad

17:13

to so other goods like the rice

17:15

and and everything you need because

17:17

there's no there's no money system.

17:20

No, it was easier. It was easier than

17:23

you know. Give me, would give me bananas,

17:25

give me cocoa and and or

17:28

whatever you have, and what the

17:30

market accepts then turn into

17:33

money. Cacao

17:35

is money basically. So

17:37

Volka flew to Trinidad. He started

17:40

hanging out, getting another locals asking

17:42

questions, but how do you how do you even do that?

17:45

No, you just ask around. I

17:48

was talking to more elderly people

17:51

because they were telling me better

17:53

the story. So I was sitting with them

17:55

having tea and chats.

17:58

Yeah, and then a little by

18:01

little I got the picture. Most

18:03

of the cacao was coming from a town called Ballets.

18:06

Barrets was truly at the end of the earth, days

18:08

from Trinidad by river, but of

18:11

course, like every other town in the Cocaine

18:13

So lowlands, it had an airstrip. So

18:15

Volka hired a plane and headed for it, never

18:18

guessing how much his life was about to change.

18:21

There was no route, no

18:24

electricity, nothing,

18:27

no, no, not even for nothing.

18:30

We were talking on on on shortwave

18:33

radio. As he got to

18:35

do the people in Bowrets, the picture got

18:37

even clearer. And that picture,

18:40

well, he almost had to pinch himself.

18:43

The cocat was coming from islands of high grounds

18:46

scattered across the wetlands, natural

18:48

terraces that didn't get drowned during the four months

18:50

rainy seasons. The locals called

18:52

these forest islands Chocolatales.

18:55

It was always harvested and used

18:58

for local chocolate in Yeah,

19:02

but on a very very low price, and

19:04

during the wet season when the cacao was ripe,

19:07

families would travel to the chocolate tales by

19:09

canoe. The journey alone could

19:11

take days. Then they camp in the

19:13

forest for months, picking the pods, opening

19:16

them and drawing the beans on mats

19:18

in the sun. Then they'd sell the beans

19:20

back in town, But the tradition

19:22

was dying in Bolivious cities.

19:24

People were switching over to powdered cocoa mix,

19:26

which was easier to use. Prices

19:28

for the wild cacao were too low to

19:31

justify the work. The kids were less

19:33

interested, so the people were starting to

19:35

give up on the yearly trips. Many

19:37

of the chocolate tallies had been abandoned, a

19:39

few had been cut down for cattle grazing. It

19:42

didn't take long for Volker to understand why the quality

19:44

was bad. Two essential steps to

19:46

making great beans are pretty darn

19:48

hard to do in the Amazon. Drawing

19:51

beans in the rainforest without a shelter of

19:53

any kind is impossible. Many

19:55

of the beans were moldy, and even the ones

19:57

that weren't moldy had very little chocolate

19:59

flavor. Fresh cacao beans

20:01

are naturally bitter and a stringer. They

20:03

have to be heaped together with their sugary pulp for

20:06

days and fermented to transform

20:08

those nasty flavors into chocolate

20:10

ones. Unfortunately, most

20:13

of the people in the world harvest in cacao don't

20:15

have the time, expertise, or facilities

20:18

to do it. Properly, and that was the case in Bolivia,

20:21

and that spoke to Vulcar's engineer Soul.

20:24

A little training and infrastructure, a

20:26

micro dose of good old German organization

20:29

could make all the difference. All

20:32

he needed was to see just how much cacao

20:34

was out there and if it was at all feasible

20:37

to improve the fermenting and drying. But

20:40

getting around the roadless jungle was

20:42

brutal. There were certain islands

20:45

I wanted to go to, so I had

20:47

to find a horse and a guide. Set

20:49

on the horse. After two hours, I couldn't

20:52

I couldn't feel my legs anymore. And

20:56

and after six

20:58

hours I couldn't feel anything anymore.

21:00

You know, I was like I was in

21:03

full pain. Days on the range

21:05

in the sun, battling heat and bugs

21:08

the horses they attract

21:10

also all kinds of flies

21:13

that sting and suck your blood,

21:16

and so you're fighting

21:18

with the horse together. You're no not

21:20

not to leave too much blood

21:23

every day, you know, when you're there,

21:26

I were seeing all kinds of things

21:28

on the horizon from

21:30

from the heat. What kind of things do you say

21:34

when you look at the horizon, Then you see

21:36

water? And then I saw all

21:39

kinds of animals,

21:41

and there wasn't anything. But finally

21:44

they made it to the forest island and the shade

21:46

of the chocolate all we went forward

21:48

with the machetta and in the inner

21:51

part it lifted up, and

21:53

it was like the trees were standing

21:55

in a nice distance to

21:57

each other and in

22:00

harmony somehow, at which

22:02

point he was like, fuck the brazil nuts.

22:04

I want to make this cacao famous. He

22:07

wondered if he was staring at the greatest development opportunity

22:09

of his career. If the international market

22:11

got excited about wild cacao, the beans

22:14

would command much more money, the pickers

22:16

could make a living, the tradition would survive,

22:18

and the chocolate tales could be preserved. He

22:21

couldn't quite see how the numbers were going to work,

22:24

but he knew it was an hour never. As

22:28

Volker continued to explore the region by foot,

22:30

boat and horseback, he fell under

22:33

its spell. Vast wetlands

22:35

with hundred mile views, lush

22:37

rain for us, more wildlife

22:39

than he'd ever seen, McCaw's

22:42

cappa, bara's weaver birds,

22:44

jaguars, and tons of cacao

22:47

just waiting to be properly fermented. And

22:50

then came the moment that whipped the trajectory

22:52

of his life in a new and unexpected

22:55

direction. Somebody said,

22:57

hey, there's a place on

22:59

say are you interested?

23:02

Actually, it hit a

23:05

long term

23:07

wish you not to by by

23:09

peaceful land. Yeah, to have

23:11

my own farm maybe and

23:13

in and maybe

23:16

have a succure place when the

23:19

world goes to hell. You know, well

23:22

it didn't go to hell, but eventually

23:25

it will tranquility.

23:31

After the break,

23:51

I want to taste of some of this god level chocolate

23:53

we got you covered. Kaleidoscope

23:55

has joined forces with Louise Abram and Statler's Chocolate

23:58

to make a special box to go along with the very

24:00

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24:02

from the banks of the Amazon without having to fight off

24:04

jaguars and Anagonda's. Just visit

24:07

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24:10

dot com to order your Wild Chocolate today.

24:12

Check the link in the show notes. You're

24:22

listening to Wild Chocolate. I

24:24

think that's it. That's yeah.

24:27

We stopped because we can get

24:29

lost. Bulker

24:31

and I are walking in tranquily Dot in

24:34

the chocolate hall he bought all those years ago.

24:37

It's shady and warm and

24:39

still the ground is smooth

24:41

with waxy leaves. The trunks of the

24:43

co cow trees are spaced evenly apart, like

24:45

the columns of some temple. There's

24:50

one, two, three,

24:53

four, five or

24:56

whatever. Yeah, amazing,

24:58

Yeah, and spacing. It

25:01

looks like that somebody you know measured

25:03

the spacing. You could

25:05

actually think about, Hey, somebody planted

25:08

these trees. You know they

25:11

are in a room. No,

25:14

it's just just a natural pattern. So

25:18

not planted, but maybe

25:20

not entirely natural, depending

25:22

on how you define natural. Bulker has

25:25

a theory. I say there

25:27

was a hunter and he had

25:29

a coco pot, and

25:31

he was sucking on the beans,

25:34

and every ten steps he spit

25:36

out the beans and sucks a dam. And

25:39

ten steps later and he sucked

25:42

and he spit out the dam. This

25:45

is what you always do when you walk through a chocolate holl

25:47

You absolut mindedly grab a pod, split

25:49

it open, and scoop a goopy handful of

25:51

white palpon's ease into your mouth. Yeah,

25:57

as you walk, you suck the juice off the

25:59

sea eats. The flavor is sweet and

26:01

tart, deliciously refreshing in the

26:04

heat of the jungle. Then you spit out

26:06

the seeds and grab another pod, and

26:08

your walk gets a little bit nicer. People

26:11

have been making that beautiful sound for ten

26:13

thousand years, and wherever you hear

26:15

it, a baby cocou try is

26:17

born. No

26:24

bulker paid a visit to the chocolates hall that was

26:26

for sale. It was huge, magical.

26:30

He followed footpaths through the woods where

26:33

generations of people had picked cocao. He

26:36

opened a pod and tasted the juice.

26:39

Monkeys chattered at him from the trees. The

26:42

ground was nice and high, unlikely to

26:44

flood. He knew if he didn't

26:46

buy it, the next buyer would probably

26:48

clear the forest. And something

26:50

tugged at him.

26:53

So he came up with ten thousand dollars and

26:55

bought it on the spot. And

26:58

then it was time to test his theory of

27:00

these beans really make great chocolate. He

27:02

picks some pods for many of the beans as

27:05

well as he knew how, and made them

27:07

into chocolate. It has almost

27:09

no bitterness. It's it

27:11

has a sweetness um

27:15

somehow between floral

27:18

and and dark

27:22

dark of fruits and and

27:24

it and it goes back and forth. There's

27:26

nothing really that compares the

27:30

the overall flavors and

27:32

the spectrum of different

27:34

flavors during the time you

27:37

have it in your mouth. There's nothing

27:39

you know that, there's nothing like this. The

27:45

rest seemed simple. He'd

27:47

make the world's most beautiful beans and bring

27:49

the chocolate industry to Bolivia's doorstep.

27:52

And you live right here. And

27:54

here's where things get a little bit cosmic. As

27:57

he cleared a patch of ground to build a house out

28:00

of the red earth, gave a clay pot, and

28:03

then another and another. They

28:05

were beautiful, with fluted necks

28:07

and intricate etched patterns, and

28:10

they were a thousand years old. As

28:14

Bulker kept digging, the treasures kept coming.

28:17

One day at tranquiladd he showed them to

28:19

me. They saw, volunteer,

28:22

there's an X, two different

28:25

xes. That's a beauty. Yeah,

28:28

they have strings attached, and

28:30

then we're hanging. This

28:33

is actually a toy. It

28:36

was a doll, probably

28:39

for a kid to play with. Amazing.

28:44

The artifacts were the remnants of an ancient settlement.

28:47

Soon archaeologists visited. Chocolatelles

28:50

were part of a massive network of earthen platforms,

28:53

terraces, pyramids, causeways

28:56

and canals. This network

28:58

stretched across thousands of square aisles.

29:01

So this part of the Amazon wasn't just primorial

29:03

wilderness. It was the overgrown

29:05

orchards and plazas and streets of

29:08

a sophisticated culture known as the Casarabe,

29:11

and a thousand years ago their

29:13

civilization was hopping, probably

29:17

a couple of million people living here um

29:20

pre Columbia. I think the largest

29:25

community of native people

29:28

in the Amazon were in this

29:31

part of Olivia and Brazil. This

29:33

may have been the source of rumors about the lost

29:35

city of z The

29:39

Casarabe civilization disappeared around

29:41

the year four for unknown reasons,

29:44

but one thing we know about them is that they

29:46

loved cacao. The reason

29:48

Tranquilidad and the other chocolate till lives

29:50

are filled with coco trees is because

29:52

for hundreds of years the people who lived

29:54

there were eating cacao and spitting out

29:57

the seats. Some of

29:59

the trees today are the same tree as the Casarabe

30:01

used. Jean Kiladad was, in

30:03

a sense a ghost island of

30:06

ancient beings for

30:12

the entire ecosystem. It's

30:15

it's a very very valuable

30:17

tree. It doesn't die, it survives

30:20

droughts, flooding, and

30:23

on top of it brings

30:25

us the foot of the gods. H

30:29

He set up the artifacts on a little altar in

30:31

the corner of his house, and he began

30:33

thinking of himself as just a small part

30:36

of a larger story. The place was talent.

30:38

He basically, I see it not as

30:40

an owner. I see it

30:42

as a piece of land that nature

30:44

gives it to me for a certain certain

30:47

amount of time. But I would

30:49

leave it as as fast

30:51

as a cat. Vulker

30:56

needed the partner with a chocolate maker, so he

30:58

began taking the beans to trade shows. But

31:00

every buyer he met looked at him like he

31:03

was crazy. I said, I have wild

31:05

cocol and they said, there's not such

31:07

a thing. And I said,

31:09

there is wild coco in the Amazon. No,

31:12

no coco comes from Micador. Okay.

31:17

And they were not alone, right, I assume no

31:19

that everybody. Everybody was ignorant. Everybody.

31:22

He finally got the attention of felsh Lean, a famous

31:24

old Swiss chocolate house. Felsh Len

31:26

was competing with the top French companies in the gourmet

31:28

chocolate world, and it was always on the hunt

31:31

for something that would set it apart from its rivals. The

31:34

buyer asked for a sample of the beans to test

31:36

in their lab in Switzerland. So Volcas

31:38

sent off the beans right away, that thing he'd

31:40

been chasing for years. He could almost

31:42

taste it. But what if

31:44

he was wrong? What if the beans weren't a special

31:47

at He thought, No on

31:49

that point, he drushed it himself and

31:52

he was right. Soon felsh Lean

31:54

asked for another four d key Lows so they could

31:57

run some test batches on the big equipment. Oh

31:59

yeah, as he said, no problem, absolutely.

32:02

Then he walked outside and stared into

32:05

his chocolates hall and wondered how

32:07

the hell he was going to do that. He

32:10

spent two sweaty months in the jungle, picking

32:12

by hand. He worked on the dusk

32:14

until he personally harvested a ton of

32:17

fresh decao. Then he fermented

32:19

it and dried it as best he could and

32:21

sent it to Switzerland. Then

32:24

he crossed his fingers and waited and

32:27

waited, and finally the

32:29

call came, could he please come to Switzerland

32:32

for a meeting. So he cleaned himself up

32:34

and crossed the Atlantic and

32:37

they were like, yeah, we want this. It

32:40

was smooth and rich and

32:43

it's very distinct. And this is also something

32:46

fresh Lean told told me. The chocolate

32:48

is clearly distinct and

32:51

this is what we are interested, don't

32:53

know. And then came the big question, how

32:56

many talks and and then

32:59

I was like, um, I

33:03

don't know. He

33:07

really didn't know. He had no clue how much

33:09

he could get his hands on and ferment properly

33:12

but fecially, and said, get us as much as

33:14

you can. We want it all. They

33:16

had big plans for this Cacao. They wanted to

33:18

make a whole new bar, unlike any that had been made

33:20

before the world's first wild

33:22

bar. They already had a name for it, Crew

33:26

Savage. That bar

33:28

was going to blow the staid world of chocolate

33:31

wide open, and it

33:33

would take Vulgar Layman on a wild ride.

33:35

It would make him famous, but it would

33:37

also nearly destroy him. That's

33:42

still to come. I'll

33:48

always remember something Vulgar said to me when

33:50

he was recounting the parade of dreamers who

33:52

had marched into the Amazon over the centuries

33:54

seeking gold and glory. There's

33:56

no Olivia for dummies, he said, many

33:59

people will have lost their fortunes here. Well,

34:02

he couldn't have known when he said it was

34:05

that he was going to be next. Look

34:07

on the phase of your wife saying

34:09

there's no money. What do you mean by

34:12

there's no money? There was

34:14

the oldest money, yeah, but now there's no more

34:16

money. Man. You must have been furious

34:18

at a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah No

34:21

with a gun in my hand that would have killed some people.

34:23

Maybe, yeah. Yeah.

34:33

On the next episode of Wild Chocolate,

34:35

I could feel myself falling down Mr rabbit

34:37

Hole. Sometimes I talked about chocolate

34:40

like music and this was like you classic

34:42

symphony orchestra, justst beautiful,

34:45

the Vatican of Chocolate. I got five

34:48

fifty bars on the shelf modeling.

34:50

These young Italians show up and

34:52

we've heard all sorts of things that you know, somebody got

34:54

shot over this and d Wild

34:59

Chock It is a Kaleidoscope production with I Heart

35:02

Podcasts, hosted and reported by me Rowan

35:04

Jacobson and produced by Shane McKeon

35:06

at Nice Mormaint Media, Edited by

35:08

Kate Osborne and mangesh Hada Kudor,

35:11

Sound design and mixing by Soundboard. Original

35:14

music composition by Spencer Stevenson, a

35:16

k. A. Botany production help

35:18

from Baheeny Shorty from My Heart.

35:20

Our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and

35:23

Nikki Etor. Special thanks to Laura

35:25

Mayor, Costaslinos Oswalash

35:28

and Aaron Coffman, Will Pearson,

35:30

codel Burn, Bob Pittman, Daria

35:32

Daniel and the team at Stetler who are helping

35:34

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

35:37

right, We're working with Louisa at others

35:39

to protect the rainforest and make delicious

35:41

Amazonian chocolate. Visit www

35:45

dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com

35:47

to taste it for yourself. That's www

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dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot

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