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The Awakening · The Steve Harvey Morning Show

0:12
Speaker 1: I'm walking down eighteen Street by six a past the
0:15
Speaker 1: Metro pavilion, and I see this line outside and I'm saying,
0:20
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing? And they're saying, um, we're
0:23
Speaker 1: going to the chocolate show. I was like the chocolate show.
0:34
Speaker 1: That's Mark Christian, chocolate historian, critic, and philosopher. I didn't
0:40
Speaker 1: get a pH d or anything like that. I gotta
0:41
Speaker 1: tell you I had earned a c h d. Chocolate Doctor,
0:45
Speaker 1: Doctor of Chocolate without a doubt, without a doubt. Dr
0:49
Speaker 1: Chocolate is such a legend that a rave review from
0:52
Speaker 1: him can propel a new bar to fame and fortune.
0:54
Speaker 1: But back in the early few thousands, gourmet chocolate wasn't
0:57
Speaker 1: on his radar. I get in there and I'm walking around.
1:00
Speaker 1: I instantly I caught on that, you know what, this
1:04
Speaker 1: is the same crowd as in Amsterdam the Cannabis. The
1:09
Speaker 1: room was vibing almost the same, and they were such
1:12
Speaker 1: a captive, passionate group. At the time, Mark was managing
1:16
Speaker 1: events around the world, including the Cannabis Cup. Now I'm
1:20
Speaker 1: a non user, but my business partner is more than
1:25
Speaker 1: a user. He's waking, bake and you know, and shake
1:28
Speaker 1: the flake all day long, and as he poked around,
1:31
Speaker 1: his Spidey sense told him that maybe he found the
1:35
Speaker 1: next big recreational substance. I had an encounter with a
1:39
Speaker 1: gentleman named Alessio Testier. He with his sister owned a
1:44
Speaker 1: company called Ama Day. And this guy was speaking in
1:48
Speaker 1: such you know, classic high falutint terms of this legacy
1:52
Speaker 1: and lore of chocolate. And he's dressed in this Armandi
1:56
Speaker 1: suit that's just you know, cut to the max. And
2:00
Speaker 1: right away might BS detector went off, you know, do
2:04
Speaker 1: you know it's sort of like, don't bullshit the bullshitter. Okay,
2:08
Speaker 1: what are you doing? But he said no, no, no,
2:10
Speaker 1: you don't understand. He's telling me about how he has
2:12
Speaker 1: this exclusive deal with this place called chew Wow, the
2:15
Speaker 1: women who was primarily a woman led cooperative. They would
2:19
Speaker 1: sun and dry the beans on the plaza of the church,
2:23
Speaker 1: you know, every season, and son there only seven acres.
2:26
Speaker 1: And he went on and on and on and on,
2:28
Speaker 1: and I was just saying, come on, chocolate is what's
2:32
Speaker 1: Halloween candy? What are you talking about? So Alessio gave
2:36
Speaker 1: markat Chuil Bar to try. It was massive. You know,
2:41
Speaker 1: Chewa is heavy on the bell. It's big. It's the
2:44
Speaker 1: blueberry pie of chocolate. It's got massive blueberry appeal. Chua
2:51
Speaker 1: was considered the greatest chocolate on earth at that time,
2:54
Speaker 1: and Alessio Tessiery had stolen it. He had tiptoed into
2:58
Speaker 1: the den of Valona, the French kingpin of gourmet chocolate,
3:02
Speaker 1: which once held exclusive control over the supply, and pride
3:05
Speaker 1: it right out of their hands. Alessia was the bad
3:09
Speaker 1: boy of chocolate, the Alfante rib the young Italian who
3:13
Speaker 1: refused to play by the French rules, and he wasn't
3:17
Speaker 1: bullshitting the bullshitter. There really was only a tiny supply
3:20
Speaker 1: of Chiuao beans coming from a single isolated valley on
3:23
Speaker 1: the mountainous Venezuela coast, and it really was dried by
3:27
Speaker 1: a hand by the women of Chuao on the town's
3:29
Speaker 1: church plaza. And those three factors, the beans, the place,
3:34
Speaker 1: and the care they set it apart. For years, Valarona
3:38
Speaker 1: had enjoyed a lock on Chuao and on the world,
3:41
Speaker 1: especially chocolate. It was the most famous company and Chuaw
3:44
Speaker 1: was its most coveted bar. But it never paid that
3:47
Speaker 1: much of a premium to the Chuow Cooperative for those beans,
3:50
Speaker 1: because back then nobody paid more for beans just because
3:53
Speaker 1: they tasted good. Cocat wasn't wine. It was treated more
3:57
Speaker 1: like corn, a commodity, but changed the day Alessia Tessieri
4:03
Speaker 1: stole you all away. What Alessio understood was that there
4:10
Speaker 1: was a world of people who thought of chocolate like wine,
4:14
Speaker 1: and they were willing to pay a lot for a
4:16
Speaker 1: great experience, and that meant great cacaws like Chuaw were
4:19
Speaker 1: worth way more than any of the chocolate companies realized.
4:23
Speaker 1: And as everyone else in the chocolate business figured that out,
4:25
Speaker 1: all eyes fell in Latin America, Cocao's birthplace. If there
4:30
Speaker 1: were more choos out there, villages harboring beautiful old varieties
4:33
Speaker 1: from cocao's pre industrial golden era, that's where they'd be.
4:37
Speaker 1: The great cacao gold Rush was on. It was almost
4:42
Speaker 1: a search of gold, but actually hit the cacaw is
4:45
Speaker 1: the gold, and eventually it was going to lead to
4:50
Speaker 1: right from Volka Lehman's Olivian doorstack and make him wonder
4:54
Speaker 1: why he ever got sucked in in the first place.
4:57
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think all all days for Damn bar On.
5:02
Speaker 1: Talking from Glidys Delvin i Heeart podcasts, this is obsessions
5:10
Speaker 1: wild Chocolate. I'm Roman Jacobson, Chapter three, The Awakening. Let's
5:28
Speaker 1: talk about that sabled place called chu Wow Wow che
5:32
Speaker 1: Wow che wowca cow chocolate wow Wow. It's quite musical.
5:39
Speaker 1: People elevated, levitated, as you know, the Vatican of Chocolate.
5:44
Speaker 1: The Chuow Holy War began in when Alessio Tessiery and
5:48
Speaker 1: his sister Cecilia launched their chocolate company am A Day
5:52
Speaker 1: Ahma Day was this upstart out of Italy, a brother
5:55
Speaker 1: and sister team, kind of like you know Phineas and
5:59
Speaker 1: Billy Hilish right. Like most of all chocolate tiers, I'm
6:03
Speaker 1: and I didn't make its own chocolate. Instead, it bought
6:06
Speaker 1: product from one of the handful of giant companies that
6:08
Speaker 1: made chocola from beans. That practice is still common. Amini
6:12
Speaker 1: wanted to be a very high end chocolate tier, and
6:14
Speaker 1: that meant they needed a supply of top notch chocolate,
6:18
Speaker 1: and in the nine nineties, that meant doing something no
6:20
Speaker 1: Italian ever wants to do. They needed to suck up
6:24
Speaker 1: to France. French chocolate making goes back quite a ways,
6:29
Speaker 1: and like everything of French couture, they regarded themselves at
6:34
Speaker 1: the highest pinnacle in this case, there's no question where
6:38
Speaker 1: the particular sucking up needed to take place. They go
6:41
Speaker 1: to tan Lemitage, which is south of Leone in France,
6:45
Speaker 1: to the house of val Roona. Bell Rona had the
6:48
Speaker 1: best supply of Grand Crew level chocolate in the world.
6:51
Speaker 1: Val Rona had this la la reputation back then and
6:55
Speaker 1: even still today. It's highly renowned, highly regarded. Very new
7:00
Speaker 1: chocolate maker who wanted to enter the upper echelon had
7:02
Speaker 1: to make the pilgrimage to detain hermitage and prostrate themselves
7:06
Speaker 1: before the lords of chocolate. And that's what Alessie Cecilia did,
7:10
Speaker 1: after waiting months for an appointment. The story goes, these
7:14
Speaker 1: young Italians show up and the French snub them, which
7:18
Speaker 1: is kind of a national trait, you know, with all
7:20
Speaker 1: apologies to the French people in the world. Uh, they said, nah,
7:25
Speaker 1: you're you're you're too below our standard. We can't deal
7:27
Speaker 1: with you. Sent away empty handed, you know, come back
7:31
Speaker 1: when you've reached a sufficient level of cultural enlightenment. They
7:34
Speaker 1: were feeling, as I said, snubbed. They went back to Italy,
7:38
Speaker 1: you know, with their tails between their legs and they
7:40
Speaker 1: were like hm, hmmm, we'll remember that. Not only did
7:45
Speaker 1: they remember it, they devoted their lives to avenging the insult,
7:50
Speaker 1: which basically what was kind of a declaration of war
7:54
Speaker 1: as some people saw it. And you know what happens
7:56
Speaker 1: when France and Italy clash. Let me think about you
8:00
Speaker 1: got products and Hermes, you've got our money and Louis Vattan.
8:05
Speaker 1: This is a rivalry. So Alessio and Cecilia came up
8:16
Speaker 1: with a new business plan. Cecilia would learn to make
8:19
Speaker 1: chocolate from the beans, and Alessia would figure out where
8:22
Speaker 1: to get the good stuff. Alessia spent the hustling. He
8:26
Speaker 1: traversed Latin America, meeting with farmers, tasting beans, doing everything
8:30
Speaker 1: he could to make himself the ultimate insider, and that
8:33
Speaker 1: work paid off. By the two thousands, Amaday was making
8:36
Speaker 1: some of the most coveted single rigs and chocolate bars
8:38
Speaker 1: in the world. But Alessio had just begun and he
8:42
Speaker 1: was dead set on securing the most prized beans of all,
8:45
Speaker 1: chew wow. He worked at it for years, slowly earning
8:48
Speaker 1: trust on the ground, building relationships, buying new uniforms for
8:51
Speaker 1: the baseball team. They do whatever, pretty much it takes
8:55
Speaker 1: so to speak. Not only were they bearing gifts, but
8:59
Speaker 1: they all pledged to pay in advance. That's pretty good. Ultimately,
9:05
Speaker 1: it came down to cold, hard cash. Amada offered to
9:08
Speaker 1: triple the price of Varona was paying, and to pay
9:10
Speaker 1: up front, and it worked. In two thousand four, the
9:13
Speaker 1: coup was complete. The Chewaw Cooperative sent registered letters to
9:17
Speaker 1: Valona and other chocolate makers. All of its beans will
9:20
Speaker 1: be going to Amidae, and only Amada had the right
9:22
Speaker 1: to use its name. For years, rumors have persisted that
9:27
Speaker 1: this war got really nasty. We've heard all sorts of
9:30
Speaker 1: things that, you know, somebody got shot from Valona over this,
9:33
Speaker 1: and not exactly What did happen was that in two
9:40
Speaker 1: thousand two, the director of Venezuela's coco buying network was
9:44
Speaker 1: machine gunned in his car. There's no evidence it was
9:47
Speaker 1: related to the battle for chihuah but Venezuela, along with
9:50
Speaker 1: many other parts of Latin America, has come to lead
9:53
Speaker 1: the world in violent crime and business. Even the chocolate
9:57
Speaker 1: business can get caught up in it. The real lesson
10:01
Speaker 1: of Chuao is that same companies were willing to go
10:04
Speaker 1: to ridiculous lengths in an incredibly dangerous region. Simply to
10:08
Speaker 1: tie up beans with great flavor because they knew that
10:11
Speaker 1: flavor could set them apart. But why was that what
10:15
Speaker 1: made those Chuao beings so special? Well, it certainly has
10:18
Speaker 1: something to do with the valley, the rivers, the soil,
10:22
Speaker 1: the trees themselves, But the real secret to Chua's greatness
10:26
Speaker 1: it was those women handling the beans on the church plasma.
10:30
Speaker 1: Maybe you've already figured it out. It all came down
10:33
Speaker 1: to fermentation. How big a factor is the fermentation? Like
10:37
Speaker 1: huge fermentation, man is definitely of the quality of the
10:41
Speaker 1: final chocolate. Fermentation is critical. Okay, I know that word
10:46
Speaker 1: has already popped up a few times, but believe it
10:49
Speaker 1: or not, a lot of our story hinges on it,
10:51
Speaker 1: and you're going to hear it again. Fermentation, fermentation, fermentation,
10:55
Speaker 1: and again, what the hell is fermentation? This is the
10:59
Speaker 1: first step the careful process of making the world's most
11:03
Speaker 1: popular flavor. Just like grapes don't taste like wine, rock
11:07
Speaker 1: at cow beans don't taste much like chocolate. You need
11:10
Speaker 1: microbes to consume the raw material and transform it into
11:13
Speaker 1: those wonderfully aromatic compounds. To cow seeds come out of
11:17
Speaker 1: their pods covered in sweet sticky sugary pulp. When the
11:20
Speaker 1: beans are removed from the pods, the sugary pulp surrounding
11:24
Speaker 1: the bean begins to ferment. To keep up those beans
11:27
Speaker 1: in a pile or put them in a wooden box,
11:29
Speaker 1: wild geese in the environment will turn that sugar into alcohol,
11:33
Speaker 1: and then bacteria will turn the alcohol into vinegar. The
11:36
Speaker 1: acid breaks open the cells and the beans, spills the
11:39
Speaker 1: contents together and initiates a lot of crazy chemistry. In
11:43
Speaker 1: the process, heat is generated, and the overall effect of
11:47
Speaker 1: this mild natural treatment is the development of a desirable
11:51
Speaker 1: brown color of fine, full flavor. Within days, nutty, spicy, winey, fruity,
11:59
Speaker 1: and laural notes appear from there. You just have to
12:03
Speaker 1: get the beans nice and dried, give them a little
12:05
Speaker 1: roast than a slow grind, and you've got chocolate because
12:10
Speaker 1: of the ter war, because of how it's fermented, the
12:13
Speaker 1: things in the air, the yeasts and the bacteria that
12:15
Speaker 1: are contributing to fermentation, and the soil and all these
12:19
Speaker 1: things you know you hear about in wine. You're going
12:22
Speaker 1: to taste the same thing with chocolate. But fermentation is
12:26
Speaker 1: a delicate art. You mess up the fermentation process, you
12:29
Speaker 1: don't do the turns on time. You can get absolutely
12:32
Speaker 1: disgusting coco out of great raw material. And what does
12:35
Speaker 1: that taste like. It's more like mushroom rotten socks, or
12:40
Speaker 1: ham chocolate or cheese chocolate. You get some really nasty flavors,
12:44
Speaker 1: wet sock chocolate, compost chocolate. Most coco farmers just want
12:49
Speaker 1: to get their being sold as quickly as possible, so
12:51
Speaker 1: they don't take the time to do a proper fermentation.
12:54
Speaker 1: Those beans will always be bitter and boring. But it's
12:59
Speaker 1: the right decision for the farmers. Remember this is a
13:03
Speaker 1: dirt poor commodity. Time is money. Why go to extra
13:08
Speaker 1: steps to improve flavor if you aren't going to be
13:10
Speaker 1: paid anything extra. But Chua was different. When the chocolate
13:13
Speaker 1: from Chiuao developed, his great reputation in the fermentation was
13:17
Speaker 1: practically a lost art. The women of Chuah were one
13:20
Speaker 1: of the few groups doing it properly, and it showed.
13:23
Speaker 1: But by the two thousands, demand for great cacao was surging.
13:27
Speaker 1: A new wave of upstarts like Amada was cutting out
13:30
Speaker 1: the middlemen, scouring the Americas for the next Chua, making
13:34
Speaker 1: their own chocolate from the beans and raising the art
13:36
Speaker 1: of chocolate to new heights, and although that first wave
13:41
Speaker 1: was European, it stayed small until it reached the other
13:44
Speaker 1: side of the Atlantic. There it found an eager market
13:48
Speaker 1: obsessed with quality and authenticity, and it became a full
13:51
Speaker 1: blown tsunami. But have them tastes like grocery store chocolate
13:54
Speaker 1: at first. Then I'd have them taste three bars that
13:57
Speaker 1: tasted like people would be like, yep, we're in we
14:00
Speaker 1: love it. We had fifty bars, we went to a hundred,
14:04
Speaker 1: and then a couple of years later we probably had
14:06
Speaker 1: two hundred, and then you come full circle to today.
14:09
Speaker 1: We have probably five fifty bars on the shelf. I
14:13
Speaker 1: haven't counted in a long time modeling. Every gold rush
14:17
Speaker 1: brings winners and losers, and the craft chocolate revolution was
14:21
Speaker 1: no difference. A lot of dinosaurs fell by the wayside,
14:25
Speaker 1: too slow to react to the shift and taste, and
14:28
Speaker 1: a few nimble players rushed in to fill the gap.
14:31
Speaker 1: Most surprising of all was a small Delhi in Salt
14:35
Speaker 1: Lake City that came out of nowhere to become the
14:38
Speaker 1: ultimate champion of wild chocolate. A Cinderella story. After the break,
14:58
Speaker 1: I want to taste of some of this God level chocolate.
15:01
Speaker 1: We Got You Covered. Kalia Scop has joined forces with
15:04
Speaker 1: Louise Abram and Stetler Chocolate to make a special box
15:07
Speaker 1: to go along with its very podcast Taste One has
15:10
Speaker 1: driven many to near madness at www. Dot Stetler dash
15:14
Speaker 1: Chocolate dot com. In the early two thousands, a lot
15:27
Speaker 1: of Americans were having the kind of epiphany that Mark
15:30
Speaker 1: Christian had at the Amide booth at the Chocolate Show,
15:32
Speaker 1: including Matt Caputo. I discovered that good chocolate shouldn't just
15:39
Speaker 1: taste like burned material deluded with loads of extra fat
15:45
Speaker 1: and vanilla. Matt's the owner of Caputo's Market in Delhi
15:48
Speaker 1: in Salt Lake City, and today he's the top importer
15:51
Speaker 1: especialty chocolate in North America. We now seld over three
15:54
Speaker 1: thousand wholesale accounts everyone from Whole Foods to you know,
15:57
Speaker 1: your mom and pop cheese shop on the corener in
16:00
Speaker 1: all fifty states. But back into a thousand, we basically
16:03
Speaker 1: had a really similar set to what you'd see in
16:06
Speaker 1: the grocery store, just cheap stuff that I found out
16:11
Speaker 1: later didn't taste like cacao. One of my friends that
16:14
Speaker 1: I respected really well just kind of said you know, man,
16:16
Speaker 1: your chocolate set is really embarrassing. Matt was crushed. Capudas
16:21
Speaker 1: wasn't just a market, It was an extension of his
16:23
Speaker 1: own personal tastes, a reflection of his abilities as a curator.
16:27
Speaker 1: He knew he had to get up to speed, so
16:29
Speaker 1: he embarked on a pilgrimage to the one place where
16:32
Speaker 1: he might find enlightenment. The fancy Food Show in New
16:36
Speaker 1: York City. I'm walking the aisles of the Italian Pavilion,
16:39
Speaker 1: and man, those Italians wear suits so well, they're just
16:42
Speaker 1: beautiful suits. All these dudes and suits and ladies in suits,
16:46
Speaker 1: and so here I am, this punk kid in my
16:49
Speaker 1: you know t shirt from Salt Lake City and just
16:52
Speaker 1: standing at the counters patiently waiting for someone to talk
16:55
Speaker 1: to me. Finally, a woman at one of the booths
16:58
Speaker 1: to pity on him and sat him out at a
17:00
Speaker 1: table and perform the ritual that has initiated many a
17:03
Speaker 1: convert into the mystery cult of fine chocolate. She said,
17:08
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you taste these three chocolates. They only
17:11
Speaker 1: have two ingredients, cocaw beans and sugar. She says, They're
17:15
Speaker 1: all made on the same equipment with the same recipe.
17:19
Speaker 1: The only difference is where the cocow beans come from.
17:23
Speaker 1: She says. This first one that you're going to taste
17:26
Speaker 1: is from Ecuador, and you're going to notice that it
17:30
Speaker 1: is very earthy and very nutty, and there's not a
17:33
Speaker 1: lot of acidity. And so okay. I taste it, and
17:35
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking to myself, like, wow, that's really uncanny
17:38
Speaker 1: that that does taste like that. Now these beans, she said, again,
17:43
Speaker 1: same ingredients, same percentage, produced on the same equipment, but
17:47
Speaker 1: this time they come from the Samburano Valley of Madagascar.
17:50
Speaker 1: This one will taste like fruit, like tart, raspberries and
17:54
Speaker 1: and citrus. And I'm preparing myself for very slight differences.
17:58
Speaker 1: I pop it in my mouth. It didn't taste like chocolate.
18:01
Speaker 1: It tastes like fresh tropical fruit. I could feel myself
18:05
Speaker 1: like falling down the rabbit hole, and I knew this
18:08
Speaker 1: didn't taste like candy. This tasted like the food of
18:11
Speaker 1: the gods. When he headed home, Matt immediately got Capuda's
18:18
Speaker 1: up to speed. I spent the next year, let's say,
18:22
Speaker 1: fleshing out our chocolate set, you know, say, picking the
18:25
Speaker 1: twenty best producers that I had read about and again.
18:28
Speaker 1: I did a lot of studying along the way, a
18:30
Speaker 1: lot of talking to experts in the industry, and doing
18:34
Speaker 1: a lot of blind tasting, like truly blind tasting. My
18:38
Speaker 1: wife would actually help me. We would do it in
18:40
Speaker 1: a pitch black room and taste like sixteen different chocolates
18:43
Speaker 1: at a time. The standouts went on the shelf of
18:45
Speaker 1: codas brands like on a day DOMI at the time, Um,
18:50
Speaker 1: those were the Italian ones, some of the French or
18:52
Speaker 1: like Michelle quisel Bo, not Valona. Probably Sharpenburger was the
18:58
Speaker 1: only American one at that time. I probably fleshed out
19:01
Speaker 1: with about fifty bars, probably from about twenty producers, and
19:05
Speaker 1: shelf kept getting bigger, and it probably took up instead
19:09
Speaker 1: of two ft let's say, the new bars were a
19:13
Speaker 1: lot prizier than the old ones, like ten bucks instead
19:16
Speaker 1: of two. But to Matt's amazement, it didn't matter. All
19:21
Speaker 1: he had to do was give customers one taste of
19:24
Speaker 1: this brave new world, and they were loading up their
19:26
Speaker 1: kurt with chocolate. Verst Viva La Revolution. Caputos was just
19:31
Speaker 1: one of many stores across the States where that kind
19:33
Speaker 1: of transformation was happening. In the mid two thousands, chocolate
19:36
Speaker 1: could be an experience, and people were eager to have it,
19:39
Speaker 1: to taste their way through Venezuela and Ecuador and the
19:42
Speaker 1: Sambrano Valley, and websites like Mark Christians sprung up to
19:46
Speaker 1: guide them. And then in the midst of all this
19:49
Speaker 1: coco craziness, a new bar appeared. It was wild and refined.
19:54
Speaker 1: It didn't taste like any of the others, not even close.
19:58
Speaker 1: While every other chocolate in the world was made with
20:00
Speaker 1: cocao that had been domesticated and adapted to farms, this
20:03
Speaker 1: was primordial and you're getting this taste of way back
20:08
Speaker 1: when it's a time machine, and so unless you're the
20:11
Speaker 1: age of like Methuselah or oldest Diamonds, even though had
20:15
Speaker 1: anything like that before, nobody had. The bar had a
20:18
Speaker 1: funny name. Instead of the ground Cruise of Valona and Bona,
20:23
Speaker 1: this was Cruise Salvage Wild. It's time. It could not
20:27
Speaker 1: have been better. It was about to become the buzziest
20:30
Speaker 1: bar in the bush and dry Voker Layman even deeper
20:33
Speaker 1: into the jungle in surger More the world. Gold raises
20:41
Speaker 1: immediately the eyebrow of a person if you say, oh,
20:45
Speaker 1: I have gold on my land, then everybody feels like
20:49
Speaker 1: you're rich. But I know more people who got poor
20:54
Speaker 1: than rich looking for gold. They didn't see the real
20:57
Speaker 1: gold at for the break a whole hill of beans.
21:26
Speaker 1: I never had a business plan then, like so many
21:29
Speaker 1: tons and this, and then and then, and the full
21:32
Speaker 1: blown business plan I never had. By two thousand five,
21:35
Speaker 1: felsh Lean, the Swiss company that was making chocolate with
21:38
Speaker 1: Vulcar beans, was so confident in the unique appeal of
21:42
Speaker 1: crusavage that it was ready to roll it out at
21:44
Speaker 1: full commercial scale. That meant no more cutes the experiments.
21:48
Speaker 1: With four kilos, they needed as much as Vulgar could
21:51
Speaker 1: possibly get. I said, yeah, okay, let's try with a
21:55
Speaker 1: container first, and the shipping container holds fifteen tons of cacao.
22:00
Speaker 1: That was the minimum Felshally needed to make the bars.
22:03
Speaker 1: But for solo player like Vulcar, that's a huge hill
22:05
Speaker 1: of beans. Ran Quila Dad could produce only a few tons.
22:09
Speaker 1: The rest he was going to have to buy from
22:11
Speaker 1: other harvesters in the region. Once again, he'd be navigating
22:14
Speaker 1: land that was precious to some of the most dangerous
22:17
Speaker 1: people in the world, ranchers, illegal loggers, and narcas, and
22:22
Speaker 1: he was going to need a ton of cash. He
22:25
Speaker 1: was going to have to build facilities in the rainforest
22:27
Speaker 1: where the beans could be fermented to his specifications, and
22:30
Speaker 1: he was going to have to spend all that money
22:32
Speaker 1: many months before he'd finally get paid for the beans.
22:34
Speaker 1: The biggest problem getting finance to get like dollars together.
22:41
Speaker 1: So he asked specially into front him some dough and
22:43
Speaker 1: they were not interested. They've been around for a hundred
22:46
Speaker 1: years because they didn't let romance cloud their business vision.
22:49
Speaker 1: They basically said, you get the beans, will pay you
22:52
Speaker 1: a decent price, but the getting part that's on you.
22:57
Speaker 1: Eventually he scored alone from a Swiss company that special
23:00
Speaker 1: liss and fair trade foods. They're getting me money, but
23:03
Speaker 1: just on on my blue eyes. Yeah, and they said, okay,
23:09
Speaker 1: we hope you'll come back with kak. You'll know that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
23:21
Speaker 1: How to do that? Well? For starters, he bought himself
23:24
Speaker 1: a dirt bike and rode hundreds of miles across the range,
23:27
Speaker 1: visiting the towns in the region that had to cow
23:30
Speaker 1: and setting up buying posts. It was a rough ride,
23:33
Speaker 1: but it was better than the horse. He hired people
23:35
Speaker 1: to buy for him in each town and told them
23:37
Speaker 1: to use tarts to keep the beans dry. But the
23:40
Speaker 1: only types they had were moth eaten ones made from
23:42
Speaker 1: cow and jaguar skins, so he flew a bunch of
23:45
Speaker 1: new ones in from Santa Cruz and handed them out.
23:48
Speaker 1: He kept in touch with everyone by short wave radio.
23:51
Speaker 1: When the beans were ready, he drove his bike to
23:53
Speaker 1: each town, loaded them onto a riverboat, and sent them
23:56
Speaker 1: on a two thousand mile journey to Lapaz. Then he
24:00
Speaker 1: lout la Pause and rented an old racquetball court to
24:03
Speaker 1: use as a warehouse. He didn't sleep for a week
24:05
Speaker 1: while he waited for the beans to arrive. Finally they
24:08
Speaker 1: showed up. He immediately opened the sacks and not good.
24:13
Speaker 1: About ten percent had turned moldy on the river trip,
24:16
Speaker 1: so he hired eight people to help him, and they
24:18
Speaker 1: spent the next two weeks on the floor of the
24:20
Speaker 1: racquetball court sorting eighteen tons of tiny beans by hand.
24:25
Speaker 1: When he had fifteen good tons, he packed them into
24:28
Speaker 1: a container and trucked it over a fifteen thousand foot
24:30
Speaker 1: mountain pass and along some of the world's most death
24:33
Speaker 1: defying roads to the sea, where a feeder vessel took
24:37
Speaker 1: it to Panama and loaded it onto a giant container ship,
24:40
Speaker 1: which carried it through the canal, across the Atlantic and
24:44
Speaker 1: into port in Rotterdam, where yet another feeder vessel carried
24:47
Speaker 1: it up the Rhine to Switzerland, where at long last
24:52
Speaker 1: felshly and transformed it into Cruisavage. It was an enormous feat,
24:57
Speaker 1: and soon the pros were getting their hands on their
24:59
Speaker 1: first ours. One of them was Matt Capuda. I'm not
25:03
Speaker 1: exactly sure when I first heard of Cruisivage. You know,
25:07
Speaker 1: you hear of a bunch of things. You don't at
25:09
Speaker 1: first know what is going to turn out to be
25:11
Speaker 1: something legitimately super cool, or what's going to turn out
25:14
Speaker 1: to be something that's you know, marketing, smoke and mirrors.
25:18
Speaker 1: So Matt was skeptical. He tried Felshin's chocolate before and
25:22
Speaker 1: never been that impressed, But that was about to change.
25:25
Speaker 1: When I popped it into my mouth, I immediately recognized
25:30
Speaker 1: that it was vastly more interesting than anything else that
25:35
Speaker 1: they made that I had previously traded. You know, sometimes
25:42
Speaker 1: I talked about chocolate like music, and this was like,
25:45
Speaker 1: you know, a classic symphony orchestra, justist beautiful. Matt wasn't alone.
25:52
Speaker 1: The world's alcoholics went gaga for cruisivage, and felsh Lee
25:55
Speaker 1: knew it needed more beans, this time thirty tons instead
25:59
Speaker 1: of fifteen Tonquilda the quality. That was the part that
26:04
Speaker 1: was most interested in, and Lene pushed me into the volume,
26:09
Speaker 1: and I was never interested in the volume. Volker was worried.
26:14
Speaker 1: He pulled off a miracle the first time, but he
26:16
Speaker 1: didn't know if he could do it again. But he
26:18
Speaker 1: knew if he couldn't supply the beans to felsh Lean,
26:21
Speaker 1: somebody else would. So he made it happen, paying dozens
26:25
Speaker 1: of middlemen to be his buyers, building fermentation houses in
26:28
Speaker 1: the bush, charter excessence so you could check on quality,
26:31
Speaker 1: renting storage rooms and ceedy towns, and paying guards to
26:34
Speaker 1: watch them. Growing every year, o back into the business
26:37
Speaker 1: and borrowing more. Besides, he'd become Bolivia's cacao kingpin. Any
26:45
Speaker 1: of Olivia's cocaine kingpins would have recognized the fundamentals of
26:48
Speaker 1: his business, and they had recognized the next development, too, competition.
26:53
Speaker 1: As word got out about wild believing cocao, new players
26:56
Speaker 1: jumped into the game. There were many copies, bad copies,
27:00
Speaker 1: good copies of what I did, so it became actually
27:04
Speaker 1: big big. Most of the newbies were nonprofits interested in
27:08
Speaker 1: sustainable developments. They had lots of foundation money to spend
27:12
Speaker 1: and little interest in turning a profit. The laws supply
27:15
Speaker 1: and demand took its course. The price for wild boliving
27:18
Speaker 1: cacao exploded from forty cents a pound to more than
27:21
Speaker 1: two dollars. Things got totally out of hand. Prices went up,
27:27
Speaker 1: sky rocking, and NGOs flooming in making projects. In a way,
27:34
Speaker 1: this was mission accomplished. Volker's dream of creating a new
27:37
Speaker 1: forest economy, one that preserved the environment while simultaneously bringing
27:41
Speaker 1: money to the area had come true. The people were
27:44
Speaker 1: getting real money for their cacao, their lives improved, and
27:48
Speaker 1: they're interested in the chocolateales returned. It was textbook sustainable development,
27:53
Speaker 1: except for everything it did for the rainforest. It wasn't
27:57
Speaker 1: sustainable for Vulcar. Neither felt really nor any other commercial
28:01
Speaker 1: buyer could afford to pay enough for the beans to
28:03
Speaker 1: cover his costs, and by two thousand ten he found
28:07
Speaker 1: himself priced out of the market he'd created. It was
28:10
Speaker 1: like ten years of turmoil, and I said, this is
28:16
Speaker 1: not what I signed I signed for. He needed a
28:20
Speaker 1: new supply cocao that hadn't yet exploded in price, and
28:24
Speaker 1: that was one advantage he still had over the competition.
28:28
Speaker 1: All these newcomers only knew how to buy beans from
28:30
Speaker 1: the most obvious players. But Vulcar had twenty years of
28:33
Speaker 1: connections all over the Bolivian Amazon, and he worked his
28:37
Speaker 1: connections for any leads on new sources of wild cocao,
28:40
Speaker 1: and finally he got a good one. On the Monterey River.
28:44
Speaker 1: In Uraka, a tribal territory, were vast supplies of wild cocao.
28:49
Speaker 1: He got in touch with the chief, who said that
28:51
Speaker 1: Urakare had been selling to local dealers for very low
28:53
Speaker 1: prices and they might be very interested in a new arrangement.
28:58
Speaker 1: So Volker made plans for an expedition to make his pitch,
29:01
Speaker 1: And that, of course, was when I got in touch
29:03
Speaker 1: with him. And if he ever thought, well, this is
29:07
Speaker 1: a pretty weird spot to bring a journalist, he never
29:09
Speaker 1: told me. And your grandpa hold this, Yeah, that's the
29:15
Speaker 1: way I watch your fingers that don't get in between.
29:22
Speaker 1: Good luck. The river village is called Elcombate, named for
29:28
Speaker 1: a battle in one of Olivia's endless border squabbles with
29:30
Speaker 1: its neighbors, and it still has the feel of a
29:33
Speaker 1: place that doesn't really belong to anywhere. And the village
29:36
Speaker 1: itself it's a disaster zone. A thin sheet of river
29:40
Speaker 1: is flowing through the settlement. The boats are tied up
29:43
Speaker 1: to the huts, chickens perched on posts, trying to come
29:46
Speaker 1: up with plan B. I wasn't recording audio back on
29:49
Speaker 1: that two thousand ten trip, but the memories are still
29:51
Speaker 1: etched in Volker's mind. It was and from a production
29:56
Speaker 1: point of view, in a miserable situation and mean from
30:00
Speaker 1: the mango trees are bags of very sad looking cacao.
30:03
Speaker 1: The coco was badly treated and due to the weather condition,
30:08
Speaker 1: I saw that the coca was wasn't so good. So
30:11
Speaker 1: that was a little disappointing right there. But I thought, oh,
30:15
Speaker 1: let's let's talk to the people find out what are
30:18
Speaker 1: their needs. We gather on a platform in the center
30:21
Speaker 1: of the village and Vulgar makes his pitch. The argument
30:26
Speaker 1: was mainly that I will come all the years and
30:29
Speaker 1: I will buy the cow at their spot so they
30:32
Speaker 1: don't have to travel, and that we well, we were
30:37
Speaker 1: working together and improving the quality because I needed a
30:41
Speaker 1: better quality than what they have, and so I said, okay,
30:46
Speaker 1: if you do all this, then I can give you
30:49
Speaker 1: a very good price. To sweeten the d l focused
30:52
Speaker 1: brought entertainment from his pack. He produces some paper and
30:56
Speaker 1: crayons and holds a CaCO drawing contest for the kids.
31:00
Speaker 1: I said, okay, we give a price to the best
31:04
Speaker 1: painting with the theme of cocao. What would you paint
31:09
Speaker 1: about kaw? And I still have them somewhere. Soon dozens
31:15
Speaker 1: of pages of golden pods and crazy cocoutry people are
31:19
Speaker 1: covering the school benches and we're all laughing hysterically, and
31:23
Speaker 1: that turns out to be the exact pitch Vulcar needed
31:25
Speaker 1: to make. All along. The women have combat am been
31:29
Speaker 1: watching us, and they're smiling at this goofy Germans drawing
31:32
Speaker 1: cocao monsters with their kids, And soon they Involker are
31:35
Speaker 1: chatting away like old friends, and then losing the tensions
31:40
Speaker 1: to the moms because finally the moms they all the
31:44
Speaker 1: ladies they were in favor. By the next morning, we
31:48
Speaker 1: leave Combati with a deal. Vulcan will build them a
31:51
Speaker 1: fermentation center so they can dry their cocaw properly and
31:55
Speaker 1: he'll send a boat to buy the cow on the
31:56
Speaker 1: spot at a premium price. We planned on spending the
32:02
Speaker 1: night in a riverside hut that belonged to our guide's brother,
32:04
Speaker 1: But when we arrive, we're greeted by scene out of
32:07
Speaker 1: a horror movie. Somebody has spent the day opening thousands
32:10
Speaker 1: of pods there and drying the beans in the hut.
32:13
Speaker 1: Ants are swarming every service, gorging on the sugary juice.
32:17
Speaker 1: By now, I have a healthy fear of Amazonian ants.
32:21
Speaker 1: They move in waves across the jungle floor, attacking anything
32:24
Speaker 1: in their path. Bugs, frogs, lizards, journalists rowan. He came
32:31
Speaker 1: with the flip flops, or sometimes he has, and I said, oh,
32:36
Speaker 1: this is no good, and he did the ant dance.
32:43
Speaker 1: True story years ago, a drunken man in Bolivia passed
32:46
Speaker 1: out against a tree that contained a big ant nest.
32:49
Speaker 1: He never woke up. These ants are I have no
32:52
Speaker 1: pity the dawn, respect in the repellent or stuff like that.
32:59
Speaker 1: Damn the mh h. Just stay the night with these
33:04
Speaker 1: ants would be suicide. We have to find another hut,
33:08
Speaker 1: but we only have an hour before dark. Our guide
33:11
Speaker 1: says he knows the place nearby downside channel of the river,
33:14
Speaker 1: so we head for it. It's on stilts sticking out
33:16
Speaker 1: of the flooded channel, and there's an old couple standing
33:19
Speaker 1: in the open door staring at us in the shop,
33:22
Speaker 1: and so are the piglets and chickens they've rescued from
33:24
Speaker 1: the flood. The funny part was that we had to
33:27
Speaker 1: share our bedroom with some pickies. Yes, we're all in
33:31
Speaker 1: the one room hut together. We string our hammocks above
33:33
Speaker 1: the piglets and climb in. There smoked predecessors hanging from
33:37
Speaker 1: the raptors above us, and the mother pig was in
33:41
Speaker 1: a different shed screaming all night, and they wanted the
33:45
Speaker 1: babies like where are you? Where are you? And the
33:47
Speaker 1: little piggies were answering, we're here, We're here. Bats beat
33:51
Speaker 1: the air in front of my face all night long
33:53
Speaker 1: as they come and go through the open hut. I
33:57
Speaker 1: lie wide awake, suspended between pig squeal and diig sausage.
34:02
Speaker 1: Vulcar stares contentedly beside me. There was a very very
34:06
Speaker 1: special night. It never happened again. There was a very
34:13
Speaker 1: very special moment in time. Yeah, I still have night venus.
34:22
Speaker 1: By the time we drag ourselves back to try and
34:24
Speaker 1: kill it dad. A few days later, Fulkers put himself
34:26
Speaker 1: a couple of years ahead of the competition. If all
34:29
Speaker 1: goes as planned, he'll have enough cocao to make felsh
34:31
Speaker 1: Lean very happy to pay back his loans and maybe
34:34
Speaker 1: even to save a bit of money for the first
34:36
Speaker 1: time in his life. And the story I write about
34:41
Speaker 1: him and our journey is going to help juice the
34:43
Speaker 1: world of cacao hunting as a whole new generation of
34:45
Speaker 1: extreme chocolate makers begins racing to get their hands on
34:48
Speaker 1: incredible beans. But that's going to plunge them into the
34:51
Speaker 1: deep end of their own forest, and at times they're
34:54
Speaker 1: going to find themselves way over their heads. I don't
34:58
Speaker 1: like guns, and I've never wanted us. Haven't gotten to me.
35:00
Speaker 1: The idea of having a gun owned by the company
35:03
Speaker 1: out in the company vehicle is terrifying. But I mean,
35:06
Speaker 1: you saw the stacks of cash in our office. We're
35:08
Speaker 1: going out there with thousands of dollars on a daily basis.
35:16
Speaker 1: Next week we dive into the dark side of big
35:20
Speaker 1: bad chocolate. Wild Chocolate is a Kaleidoscope production with I
35:33
Speaker 1: Heart Podcasts, hosted and reported by me Roan Jacobson and
35:36
Speaker 1: produced by Shane McKeon at Nice Marmaint Media. Edited by
35:40
Speaker 1: Kate Osborne gesh had to Kudor. Sound design and mixing
35:43
Speaker 1: by Soundboard. Original music composition by Spencer Stevenson, a k
35:47
Speaker 1: a Botany production help from Bahi Ni Shory from My
35:51
Speaker 1: Heart Are. Executive producers are Katrina Norval and Nikki or
35:55
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Laura Mayor Costaslinos Ozwalash and Aaron Offman,
36:00
Speaker 1: Will Pearson, codel Burn, Bob Pittman, Daria Daniel and the
36:04
Speaker 1: team at Stetler who are helping us make a very
36:06
Speaker 1: special chocolate of our own. That's right, We're working with
36:09
Speaker 1: Louise and others to protect the rainforest and make delicious
36:12
Speaker 1: Amazonian chocolate. Visit www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com
36:17
Speaker 1: to taste it for yourself. That's www Dot Stetler dash
36:23
Speaker 1: Chocolate dot com. And if you want to hear more
36:26
Speaker 1: of this type of content. Nothing is more important to
36:28
Speaker 1: the creators here at Kaleidoscope than subscribers, ratings, and reviews.
36:32
Speaker 1: Please spread the love wherever you listen