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Across the Americas in Search of Cacao's Soul
by Rowan Jacobsen
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.
"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)
"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." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"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." ―Benjamin Lorr, author of The Secret Life Of Groceries
"Jacobsen is among our best writers documenting the connections between delectable foodstuffs and the besieged ecosystems and communities that underpin them. In his latest, he takes us on a journey from chocolate's origins to its current crisis to its imperiled but potentially delicious future. If you doubt that life without good chocolate is worth living, this is your book." ―Tom Philpott, author of Perilous Bounty
"If chocolate is your thing then this is your book-a Rosetta Stone for decoding everything this ancient and fascinating culinary tradition brings to the table." ―Paul Greenberg, New York Times bestselling author of Four Fish
This information about Wild Chocolate was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rowan Jacobsen is the author of eight books, including the James Beard Award-winning A Geography of Oysters and 2021's Truffle Hound. He has written for the New York Times, Harper's, Outside, Food & Wine, Forbes, Mother Jones, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Vice, and others, and he appears regularly in Best American Science & Nature Writing and Best Food Writing. He has been an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, a McGraw Center fellow, and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. The creator and host of the 2022 podcast series "Wild Chocolate," he lives in Vermont.
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