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Big Bad Chocolate · The Steve Harvey Morning Show

0:10
Speaker 1: All right, Adrian, We're at the corner of Columbus, staring
0:16
Speaker 1: at the storefront, and I've brought you here because I
0:19
Speaker 1: know you were on the scene in Brooklyn circa two
0:22
Speaker 1: thousand seven. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. I'm in
0:26
Speaker 1: New York with Adrian Anderson, the ultimate Brooklyn food Maymon.
0:30
Speaker 1: Adrian has been working with chefs and food media around
0:32
Speaker 1: New York for years, both making the food and making
0:36
Speaker 1: it look beautiful. I was just getting out of restaurants
0:41
Speaker 1: and starting to work as a food stylist. It was
0:45
Speaker 1: maybe still living in Williamsburg, maybe Bushwick around that time.
0:49
Speaker 1: That's what I was hoping for. Adrian co owned the
0:51
Speaker 1: studio where all the food magazine shop and she did
0:54
Speaker 1: a lot of the styling. So when I wanted someone
0:57
Speaker 1: to walk me through the ultimate cautionary tale in world
1:00
Speaker 1: of craft chocolate, a tail that has a lot to
1:03
Speaker 1: do with the looks and appearances, but bygone Brooklyn era,
1:06
Speaker 1: I knew wh would ask. I feel like we were
1:09
Speaker 1: at the beginning or kind of the early stages of
1:12
Speaker 1: farm to table, and I think that we were still
1:15
Speaker 1: in this era of discovery and excitement about sourcing and
1:22
Speaker 1: honesty and authenticity in food, and in that like budding
1:28
Speaker 1: good future suddenly appears a new choppolate maker, Rygan Williamsburg.
1:33
Speaker 1: The Mask Brothers. Yeah, do you remember when they first
1:37
Speaker 1: came onto your radar? I can't pinpoint the exact moment.
1:43
Speaker 1: It was more of a sort of a creeping light
1:47
Speaker 1: leak at the periphery of your consciousness. Stores that had
1:51
Speaker 1: the cool food at the time started carrying masts and
1:55
Speaker 1: it was really noticeable because the design the rappers was
2:00
Speaker 1: so good. It really was. Every bar looks like it
2:04
Speaker 1: was wrapped in beautiful, old fashioned wallpaper with minimal words.
2:08
Speaker 1: In an era when most chocolate bars were still heavy
2:11
Speaker 1: on the bling, these bars seemed handmade and real, and
2:16
Speaker 1: the food world gobbled them up. How do you make
2:18
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible Valentine's Day chocolate? Well, here at the Masked
2:23
Speaker 1: Brothers chocolate factory, they start with organic CACW beans, the
2:27
Speaker 1: Mass Brothers. It's very artsy, fancy. Just as important as
2:33
Speaker 1: that artsy packaging of the bars was the packaging of
2:36
Speaker 1: the brothers themselves, Rick and Michael Mast, two young guys
2:40
Speaker 1: with bushy red beards and Victorian clothing, slinging burlap sacks
2:44
Speaker 1: of cocaw beans for the eager cameras. Mass Brothers chocolate
2:48
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. Rick, your place is a chocolate in urvana. Basically,
2:53
Speaker 1: I love it. What makes you guys so different? Bot
2:55
Speaker 1: making chocolate from scratch, all in house. We're bringing in
2:58
Speaker 1: beans from all around all over the world. Right, So
3:02
Speaker 1: like Brooklyn itself, it's a chocolate bar that's made up
3:04
Speaker 1: of things from all around the world. So today we're
3:06
Speaker 1: gonna show you how we make our Brooklyn blend. I
3:08
Speaker 1: love the showt T. The aesthetic was ubiquitous at the time.
3:12
Speaker 1: It was inescapable if you were, yeah, the bearded Brooklyn
3:17
Speaker 1: bro selling, selling cheese or slicking cocktails. Suddenly, the Masks
3:24
Speaker 1: had fawning coverage in the New York Times and bond appetite,
3:28
Speaker 1: new shops in London and l a and a global
3:30
Speaker 1: spotlight as America's breakout Kraft chocolate maker. Their glass walled
3:34
Speaker 1: Williamsburg factory, where you could watch real live hipsters making chocolate,
3:38
Speaker 1: became a tourist mecca. But there was a story. There
3:42
Speaker 1: was that big story. I'm sure you know what it was.
3:44
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't remember. Yes, that's why I'm here.
3:47
Speaker 1: Some people in the food world, the chocolate world are
3:50
Speaker 1: calling them frauds, the Milli Vanilli of chocolate, which is
3:56
Speaker 1: a very strong thing to say. They were re melting
4:00
Speaker 1: other kinds of chocolate into their chocolate bars, especially in
4:02
Speaker 1: the early days when they were claiming they were being
4:04
Speaker 1: too bar chocolate alloys. That's just going against the purity
4:07
Speaker 1: the nature of the very earnest looks in the Big
4:10
Speaker 1: Beard's essentially, a blogger for the website Dallas food dot
4:17
Speaker 1: org broke the story that would bring the Mass Brothers down.
4:21
Speaker 1: During their rise to fame, when they were the poster
4:24
Speaker 1: beards for authenticity, they weren't actually making some of their
4:27
Speaker 1: own chocolate. They were buying it from other companies, melting
4:31
Speaker 1: it down, pouring it into their own molds, then wrapping
4:35
Speaker 1: it up in old timey paper. At first, the Masks
4:38
Speaker 1: denied everything, but eventually they are forced to acknowledge that
4:42
Speaker 1: in their early years they'd been re melters. They claim
4:46
Speaker 1: they've gone straight long ago, but the damage was done.
4:50
Speaker 1: The shops disappeared, the factory shuttered, and the Masks themselves
4:57
Speaker 1: faded away. That felt the end after that, like the
5:01
Speaker 1: expossa had come out. They had been mocked relentlessly. Everything
5:08
Speaker 1: closed down. It just it felt like it was officially over,
5:12
Speaker 1: and so we all thought. But now here we are.
5:17
Speaker 1: Look up at the storefront and tell me what I
5:20
Speaker 1: see that We've got a hand painted window that says
5:24
Speaker 1: masked Markets established, and there's a bunch of people inside.
5:31
Speaker 1: It looks like the two thousand and eleven Brooklyn aesthetic
5:36
Speaker 1: is alive and well. Yes, the masts are back, selling
5:41
Speaker 1: chocolate and coffee and housewares and body soaps in a
5:46
Speaker 1: squeaky clean space that could double as a Williams Sonoma.
5:49
Speaker 1: The remelters have reformed, but don't be too quick to
5:53
Speaker 1: blame the masts re melting style over substance. For all
5:57
Speaker 1: the controversy in the world of big Chocolate, it that's
6:00
Speaker 1: just business as usual. But to understand just how bad
6:04
Speaker 1: it gets, we're going to have to head into the
6:07
Speaker 1: belly of the beast. From Kaleidoscope and I Heeart podcasts.
6:14
Speaker 1: This is Obsessions Wild Chocolate. I'm Roman Jacobson, Chapter four,
6:20
Speaker 1: Big Bad Chocolate. All right, so let's actually let's turn
6:48
Speaker 1: to We are old foods. Here, we are our whole foods.
6:51
Speaker 1: Whole foods in Brooklyn right on on the planet one
6:56
Speaker 1: of them. I'm with Clay Gordon, the creator and moderator
6:59
Speaker 1: of the Chocolate Life dot com, which is the world's
7:02
Speaker 1: biggest online community for chocolate fans. Clay teaches chocolate appreciation classes,
7:07
Speaker 1: he consults with chocolate companies. He wrote A Great Guy
7:10
Speaker 1: to Chocolate, and he was on the scene when the
7:12
Speaker 1: masts had their big run. We all wanted them to
7:17
Speaker 1: succeed right because they were m bringing bad chocolate, to
7:24
Speaker 1: prefer from cheap industrial chocolate into craft chocolate, and um.
7:29
Speaker 1: They were the people who were the gateway. People came
7:32
Speaker 1: to them right and they were the introduction. This was
7:36
Speaker 1: during that strange stretch of the two thousands when chocolate
7:39
Speaker 1: suddenly became virtuous instead of a guilty treat. It pivoted
7:43
Speaker 1: into a worldly earnest, possibly even healthy luxury. The candy
7:48
Speaker 1: aisles exploded with snazzy bars advertising their high cocow percentage,
7:52
Speaker 1: socially responsible business practices, and exotic cocau surces. Of course,
7:57
Speaker 1: the first chocolate makers to do such bars really were
8:00
Speaker 1: tiny operations that walk the walk, but it didn't take
8:03
Speaker 1: long before they were joined in the virtuous section by
8:06
Speaker 1: big chocolate. The handful of giant corporations that dominate the
8:11
Speaker 1: chocolate business. But to look at the shelves and whole foods,
8:14
Speaker 1: you'd never know it. It's really really hard to understand
8:18
Speaker 1: what it is we have presented here. So, for example,
8:21
Speaker 1: there's a brand called Lilies, So Lili's is known for
8:25
Speaker 1: sugar free chocolate. When most people look at a bar
8:30
Speaker 1: of Lilies, they'll go, oh, it's fair trade, right right.
8:34
Speaker 1: The other thing that's really important to know is that
8:36
Speaker 1: the corporate parent of Lilies is Hershey Harsh Company. Yes,
8:42
Speaker 1: Lilies is owned by Hershey, and it should be known
8:46
Speaker 1: that Hershey is a name defendant in a lawsuit having
8:50
Speaker 1: to do with um knowingly profiting from illegal labor in
8:55
Speaker 1: West Africa. Chocolate, as you may or may not know,
9:02
Speaker 1: has some serious issues. U S senators shared Brown and
9:06
Speaker 1: Ron Wyden, arguing that there is evidence the Ivory Coast
9:09
Speaker 1: relies on forced child labor to harvest coco instead of
9:13
Speaker 1: attending school. These children so through cocoa beans on a plantation.
9:17
Speaker 1: The Washington Post reported in June that more than two
9:21
Speaker 1: million children were engaged in the practice on West African
9:25
Speaker 1: cocoa farms. The big chocolate companies don't actually own cacao farms.
9:31
Speaker 1: They are many links away at the other end of
9:33
Speaker 1: the supply chain, and this makes it difficult to tell
9:36
Speaker 1: where the coco originated. So their argument is that, hey,
9:39
Speaker 1: we're just buying these beans from cargular whoever. The reality
9:44
Speaker 1: is they got a pretty dark They have accepted responsibility,
9:47
Speaker 1: many of them by signing Hrican Angle Protocol. They know
9:50
Speaker 1: that these are issues. In a wave of news stories
9:55
Speaker 1: exposed the shocking amount of child trafficking and slavery in
9:58
Speaker 1: the Chocolate Trade Act in two thousand one, the US
10:01
Speaker 1: Congress responded, led by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Elliott Angle.
10:06
Speaker 1: Together they introduced the idea of slapping a label on
10:09
Speaker 1: chocolate products indicating whether or not the product was free
10:12
Speaker 1: of child slave labor. We need a better commitment, a
10:16
Speaker 1: stronger commitment from the chocolate industry worldwide. That's Tom Harkin.
10:22
Speaker 1: Families need to know that when they buy chocolate in
10:25
Speaker 1: whatever form, that a lot of that's being produced by
10:29
Speaker 1: what is really an essence, child slavery. To no one's surprise,
10:34
Speaker 1: the industry freaked out. Chocolate is a one billion dollar
10:37
Speaker 1: business and a child slavery logo splashed across every candy bar.
10:42
Speaker 1: Wouldn't exactly be great for sales. Big Talcola said, you
10:45
Speaker 1: know what, we don't need you to enact loss. We
10:49
Speaker 1: will take care of it ourselves. The problem ourselves, and
10:53
Speaker 1: every time their self imposed deadline approach, they kicked the
10:58
Speaker 1: cocoa pot down the road and they're five years. In
11:01
Speaker 1: two thousand five, Big Chocolate promised to get child labor
11:04
Speaker 1: out of the supply chain by two thousand ten. In
11:06
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, they said they could do it. They
11:11
Speaker 1: said that they couldn't even trace where most of their
11:13
Speaker 1: coco comes from. The problem is that coco is a
11:18
Speaker 1: commodity bought and sold by the shipload by traders in
11:21
Speaker 1: New York and London, then stored in giant warehouses until
11:25
Speaker 1: some company buys it. Between the farmer who grows it
11:28
Speaker 1: and the chocolate bar on the supermarket shelf, it can
11:31
Speaker 1: change hands a dozen times. It's nearly impossible to trace
11:35
Speaker 1: that path. Not that some companies aren't trying, all right,
11:39
Speaker 1: So now you're playing a Tony's chacolon um. They sold
11:44
Speaker 1: over a hundred million dollars in chocolate. Tony's is a
11:48
Speaker 1: Dutch company founded twenty years ago. With a singular mission
11:51
Speaker 1: to eradicate slavery from the chocolate supply chain. Tony's groovy
11:56
Speaker 1: Piece of Love packaging gives them this Ben and Jerry's vibe.
11:59
Speaker 1: But there is a key difference. So Tony's is not
12:02
Speaker 1: a chocolate maker. Tony's is a marketing company, right. They
12:06
Speaker 1: produce chocolate bars from chocolate which is manufactured by someone else.
12:10
Speaker 1: So the chocolate is manufactured for them by Barry Calibrats,
12:14
Speaker 1: biggest biggest chocolate company in the world. That's Barry Calibo,
12:18
Speaker 1: the goliath of chocolate makers, with more than sixty production
12:21
Speaker 1: facilities around the globe and eight billion dollars in annual sales.
12:25
Speaker 1: To their credit, Tony's purchases all their beings from seven
12:28
Speaker 1: cooperatives in West Africa that they ensure are free of
12:31
Speaker 1: slave labor, and they pay a premium to do that.
12:34
Speaker 1: But the fact that the largest chocolate maker in the
12:36
Speaker 1: world is making all of their chocolate for them makes
12:39
Speaker 1: things complicated. The cocoa butter for this bar is probably
12:45
Speaker 1: produced in the Calibut factory in West Africa. And why
12:49
Speaker 1: is that a problem? Well, Calibut is one of the
12:52
Speaker 1: name defendants in the trafficking victims protection reauthorization at lawsuit,
12:57
Speaker 1: and so can we say that they're actually working to
13:00
Speaker 1: eradicate slavery in the entire chocolate supply chain. They're trying,
13:06
Speaker 1: for sure, but due to its ties to Barry call About,
13:10
Speaker 1: Tony's was removed from an important list of slavery chocolate companies.
13:14
Speaker 1: And Tony's isn't the only indie brand with ties to
13:17
Speaker 1: Big Chocolate. Clay picked up another bar I want. I
13:20
Speaker 1: had some history with chocolate up. These guys have been
13:22
Speaker 1: around forever, so that was like the first serious dark
13:27
Speaker 1: chocolate I started buying in like thees. Part of this
13:30
Speaker 1: is looking at labels, so when you buy chocolate products,
13:34
Speaker 1: you can be sure your purchase supports a better future
13:36
Speaker 1: for coco farmers in their families. So chocolate love Very
13:41
Speaker 1: kel about Choco them too, Yes, I didn't know that.
13:45
Speaker 1: And so what they're doing is this claim about sustainable, social,
13:48
Speaker 1: and ethical is based entirely on what Very kell About
13:51
Speaker 1: is claiming that they're doing on the farm. So they're
13:54
Speaker 1: they bary calibut, They're like, you're sustainable and ethical? Right?
13:59
Speaker 1: He kept going other brands that you might see Justin's. Yeah,
14:02
Speaker 1: for sure. Also Penetrate owned by Hormle Foods, the Endangered
14:08
Speaker 1: Species chocolate company. They don't make chocolate. They are a
14:11
Speaker 1: marketing company. The chocolate is made for them by another company.
14:14
Speaker 1: Does anybody on the shelf make their own chocolate? I
14:17
Speaker 1: believe well, I believe well theo they're the only ones.
14:24
Speaker 1: By the time Clay had gone to the whole shelf,
14:26
Speaker 1: it was clear that what the Mass brothers had done
14:29
Speaker 1: it was just standard practice in the weird world of chocolate,
14:32
Speaker 1: and Clay says, the chicanery goes all the way to
14:35
Speaker 1: the top. Support you to know the Persha Hershi does
14:37
Speaker 1: not manufacture chocolate at all at all anymore. They are
14:41
Speaker 1: a candy company, not a chocolate company, and so the
14:44
Speaker 1: chocolate for them. If you go to if you actually
14:46
Speaker 1: go to Pershey, Pennsylvania, you will not find chocolate manufacturing anymore. Um.
14:50
Speaker 1: They buy their chocolate in from big producers, car gil
14:53
Speaker 1: companies like that, big producers. Um. When you go to
14:56
Speaker 1: Hershey Park and you're like, ye, they're not They're not
14:59
Speaker 1: making chocolate. That's also if this makes you want to
15:04
Speaker 1: break free from the chocolate empire completely, you're not alone.
15:08
Speaker 1: I just felt inherently like there was just something really
15:12
Speaker 1: messed up with the system itself. But don't join the
15:16
Speaker 1: resistance instead, and I wanted to build an alternative system.
15:23
Speaker 1: Rad shotgun with a rebel commander on a risky mission.
15:26
Speaker 1: After the break, Hey everyone, I want to taste of
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16:09
Speaker 1: your wild Chocolate today link in the show notes. So
16:24
Speaker 1: what's the lifespan on one of these trucks doing doing
16:28
Speaker 1: this kind of work? You managed to keep it going infinited,
16:32
Speaker 1: Infinited with the right mechanic. I'm with Emily Stone and
16:36
Speaker 1: Diane Coy. Emily is the founder of Uncommon Cacao, which
16:40
Speaker 1: acts as a matchmaker for five thousand small farmers in
16:42
Speaker 1: twelve countries and hundreds of being to bar chocolate makers
16:45
Speaker 1: in the US. And Europe. Diane is the new managing
16:48
Speaker 1: director of the Belize Business. She's a Kechi Maya who
16:51
Speaker 1: grew up in the area and spent time as a
16:53
Speaker 1: kid harvesting cocao with her parents. We're riding in a
16:56
Speaker 1: rusty thirty three year old Ford f two fifty through
16:59
Speaker 1: the back roads of Belie, buying kakao from farmers. So
17:02
Speaker 1: everything we're seeing as my as part of the Maya
17:05
Speaker 1: Mountains or yeah, everything here this is sort of the
17:08
Speaker 1: southern tip and then extends up towards Kyo. Really beautiful.
17:13
Speaker 1: How many communities are resourcing kakao from that vand UM
17:16
Speaker 1: tent to eat twenty eight communities in the Biomos. In
17:21
Speaker 1: the late two thousand's, Emily was living in Boston working
17:24
Speaker 1: on the campaign to pressure Hershey to address its child
17:27
Speaker 1: slavery problem. But the more she watched big chocolates say
17:30
Speaker 1: all the right things, the more she realized the system
17:33
Speaker 1: was never going to change from within. There's no reason
17:36
Speaker 1: for chocolate to be causing poverty. Um. It is the
17:41
Speaker 1: leftover inheritance of colonialism and of a world in which
17:47
Speaker 1: slavery was legal. So Emily decided to help build a
17:52
Speaker 1: new system Her vision was to act as a matchmaker
17:59
Speaker 1: for small farms and being to bar chocolate makers, to
18:02
Speaker 1: cut out those twelve layers of intermediaries and deliver more
18:05
Speaker 1: money to the farmers and better beans to the chocolate makers.
18:09
Speaker 1: And she knew the place to start was the Americas,
18:11
Speaker 1: which had the old varieties of cacao that the high
18:14
Speaker 1: end chocolate community craved and no system for getting it
18:17
Speaker 1: to market in good condition. In two thousand ten, she
18:20
Speaker 1: moved to Belize and started talking to farmers. They told
18:23
Speaker 1: her they needed an easier way to sell their beings
18:26
Speaker 1: at a better price. She said, got it, So she
18:29
Speaker 1: bought a beat up truck and offered to pick up
18:31
Speaker 1: their beings right at the farm. Then she built a
18:34
Speaker 1: professional fermentation station which would help her charge more for
18:37
Speaker 1: these improved beings. Within a few years, farmers were getting
18:40
Speaker 1: twice the price for their coca and My Mountain Beings
18:44
Speaker 1: had become famous. But police alone was a drop in
18:47
Speaker 1: the bucket. If she really wanted to build a more
18:50
Speaker 1: just chocolate industry, she needed to expand, and she knew
18:53
Speaker 1: where to go. I was hearing from people and police,
18:56
Speaker 1: you know. Oh yeah, my cousins in Guatemala they have
18:58
Speaker 1: like have you ever been to Guatemalad? And I had
19:02
Speaker 1: it good over there, and then I get the bus
19:05
Speaker 1: and you know, it was just kind of like asking her.
19:06
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, how did I get from here to here?
19:08
Speaker 1: Anytime I got to the next bus station and everyone's
19:11
Speaker 1: looking at me, like, who the f are you? Someone
19:15
Speaker 1: like asked me. They're like, what do you here? I'm
19:18
Speaker 1: here to you know, I'm here to look at cacao.
19:20
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden they all were like cocaw.
19:22
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, they've got we have a lot
19:24
Speaker 1: of cacao. It's like, oh great, That's what I'm here for.
19:28
Speaker 1: And literally, as the minibus was like making its way
19:32
Speaker 1: up the mountain, we were stopping at every single person
19:35
Speaker 1: on the bus as cacao, farm and student. She's meeting
19:39
Speaker 1: everyone in the community and learning how important they were
19:42
Speaker 1: to the history of chocolate. They were kept chi Maya
19:45
Speaker 1: direct descendants of the people who had introduced chocolate to
19:48
Speaker 1: Europe when they sign a friendly delegation to the Spanish
19:51
Speaker 1: court bearing beans from these very hillsides. Emily had stumbled
19:56
Speaker 1: into the heart of chocolate, an unbroken lineage going back
20:00
Speaker 1: of years, but that didn't make their situation any easier.
20:04
Speaker 1: Their market were um coyotes, which are basically intermediaries that
20:11
Speaker 1: drive around these back roads with a stack of cash
20:13
Speaker 1: and a handgun and they buy and a scale and
20:16
Speaker 1: they buy whatever the farmers have to sell, whether that's corn, beans, cardamom, chili, cinnamon, cocao, allspice. Um,
20:25
Speaker 1: there's no transparency around where that coca is going. There's
20:29
Speaker 1: no technical assistance, and um there's no fermentation. It's all
20:34
Speaker 1: washed cocao. So yeah, these producers were left without a market.
20:37
Speaker 1: This was her dream scenario. The cocow varieties turned out
20:41
Speaker 1: to be excellent old ones, but the cocao wasn't being
20:44
Speaker 1: fermented at all. The farmers were just washing the pulp
20:47
Speaker 1: off as soon as they opened the pods, drying the beans,
20:50
Speaker 1: and selling them as fast as possible. The delicious flavors
20:53
Speaker 1: that emerge with fermentation were never being given a chance
20:56
Speaker 1: to develop, and it was all due to the dysfunctional market.
21:00
Speaker 1: The coyotes were going to pay the same super low
21:02
Speaker 1: price no matter what. So Emily jumped on the opportunity.
21:05
Speaker 1: She moved to Guatemala, taught the farmers how to ferment
21:08
Speaker 1: and drive properly bought the cacao for twice the going
21:11
Speaker 1: rate and sold it directly to her growing list of
21:14
Speaker 1: being too bar clients. But the coyotes did not take
21:17
Speaker 1: this lying down. It's been a huge challenge for locally.
21:21
Speaker 1: I mean it's been there've been security issues they've been
21:23
Speaker 1: so it has what kind of like what what kind
21:27
Speaker 1: of challenge or what kind of security? There were physical
21:32
Speaker 1: threats made to association members. The battle with the coyotes
21:40
Speaker 1: came to a head after the government arranged to build
21:43
Speaker 1: a new fermentation and drawing center for the farmers Association.
21:47
Speaker 1: Emily wasn't directly involved, but she'd promised to buy the cacao,
21:51
Speaker 1: which was a key to the deal. But one local
21:53
Speaker 1: coyote was particularly unhappy about losing his turf, and when
21:57
Speaker 1: the government representatives came to sign the paper or work,
22:00
Speaker 1: they met a most unwelcome welcoming committee. Basically, this disgruntled
22:05
Speaker 1: guy and his family surrounded the building where this signing
22:09
Speaker 1: was happening, armed with machetes and threatened that if they
22:13
Speaker 1: signed it like there would be violence, and so they
22:16
Speaker 1: left without signing. The project never happens. The bad blood
22:19
Speaker 1: continued for a couple of years, and the farmers warned
22:22
Speaker 1: Emily and her team not to visit the coyote, and
22:25
Speaker 1: sort of his family members were like, you know, if
22:28
Speaker 1: those people come, it's not it's not going to be good.
22:34
Speaker 1: But the fermentation center got built in the neighboring community,
22:37
Speaker 1: and once it became clear to all the farmers how
22:39
Speaker 1: much better the new system was, they made it very
22:42
Speaker 1: clear to the coyote that the times they were changing.
22:46
Speaker 1: We have found that over time there's there is a
22:50
Speaker 1: circle of trust and security that is established by the
22:53
Speaker 1: farmers themselves, and that the consequences for anyone who interferes
23:00
Speaker 1: will be high. Since then, Guatemala has become a prized
23:03
Speaker 1: source of cocao in the craft chocolate world. But that
23:06
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's an easy business. Bullets, razors, nails, cement,
23:12
Speaker 1: you name it, it's been found in a cocao bag.
23:15
Speaker 1: And sometimes Emily finds herself thinking more like Walter White
23:18
Speaker 1: than Willy Wanka. So I don't like guns, and I've
23:22
Speaker 1: never wanted us to have gotten to me. The idea
23:24
Speaker 1: of having a gun owned by the company out in
23:26
Speaker 1: the company vehicle, someone from the company, you know, having
23:30
Speaker 1: the ability to use a gun is terrifying. But Guatemala
23:34
Speaker 1: is one of the poorest and most dangerous countries in
23:37
Speaker 1: the world, and a shipping container of cacao is worth
23:40
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars um. There have been instances
23:44
Speaker 1: of coffee containers being robbed, um, you know, violently in Guatemala,
23:48
Speaker 1: and so obviously want to ensure that our cocao does
23:52
Speaker 1: not get stolen on its way to the port for export.
23:55
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, we've got We've always got guys with
23:56
Speaker 1: guns following our containers. I hope by now it's abundantly
24:06
Speaker 1: clear that making great chocolate from responsibly sourced beans is really,
24:11
Speaker 1: really hard, even when you're not dealing with guns and charlatan's.
24:15
Speaker 1: Sometimes you could do everything right and still fail. I
24:20
Speaker 1: thought this was gonna taste amazing, and this was like
24:24
Speaker 1: gonna be like the like the gold of the forest,
24:31
Speaker 1: just asked Louisa Abraham, the young Brazilian chocolate maker who
24:34
Speaker 1: began working with the Santo Daimi ayahuasca cult in the Amazon.
24:38
Speaker 1: Louisa fell in love with the people. She paid fair
24:40
Speaker 1: prices for their cocao. She did everything right. It ended
24:45
Speaker 1: up being so crappy. It was just horrible what to
24:49
Speaker 1: do when you've just made the worst chocolate in the world.
24:52
Speaker 1: After the break, I I had fallen in love with
25:21
Speaker 1: all the story, with all like the like it's so poetic,
25:25
Speaker 1: like crossing Brazil to go to the forest, go deep
25:30
Speaker 1: into the forest to get the wild cacao savage um
25:36
Speaker 1: and and then to bring it back and to make chocolate.
25:38
Speaker 1: It was just so enchanting for me. After meeting the
25:43
Speaker 1: Sciento dim a cow collectors on the Peruce River, Louisa
25:47
Speaker 1: Abraham devoted herself to making chocolate with the wild cocaw
25:49
Speaker 1: of the Amazon. I want to do something with a purpose.
25:53
Speaker 1: I want to impact others life. I want to like
25:58
Speaker 1: believe my mark on this. So she and her dad
26:02
Speaker 1: bought twenty kilos of cocao for the co op, stuffed
26:05
Speaker 1: it into their extra luggage, and headed back to South Paula.
26:08
Speaker 1: She built a micro chocolate factory in her parents utility closet,
26:12
Speaker 1: and she roasted the beans in her tiny oven and
26:14
Speaker 1: blew off the shells with a hair dryer and ground
26:17
Speaker 1: them into a silky paste in her mini roller and
26:19
Speaker 1: made her very first batch of wild Brazilian chocolate. And
26:23
Speaker 1: when it had cooled She lifted a piece in her hand,
26:26
Speaker 1: placed it on her tongue, closed her eyes, and that
26:30
Speaker 1: the essence of the Amazon wash over her, and everything
26:34
Speaker 1: tasted so awful for me. It was just so funky taste,
26:39
Speaker 1: so like ammonia, and and so like unnatural. She ran
26:45
Speaker 1: it by some others to make sure it wasn't just her.
26:47
Speaker 1: I gave it to my chefs and to my colleagues
26:50
Speaker 1: too to try, and they were like mocking of me,
26:54
Speaker 1: like you went all the way too could to get
26:57
Speaker 1: this piece of you know, like naturally. Louisa assumed that
27:02
Speaker 1: she was the problem, and I was like, okay, maybe
27:05
Speaker 1: I am the one doing it, doing something different. So
27:07
Speaker 1: I changed the rulest profile. I changed, like the how
27:13
Speaker 1: I was. I changed even I even my sugar. I changed.
27:16
Speaker 1: I changed everything, and nothing would work. For the next
27:22
Speaker 1: three years, she kept making chocolate with the paruce beans
27:25
Speaker 1: because she was determined to make it work, but she
27:27
Speaker 1: just couldn't get the taste dry. And while she managed
27:30
Speaker 1: to get the chocolate into stores around Brazil on the
27:32
Speaker 1: strength of the Wild Cocows Argent story, nobody ever reordered.
27:37
Speaker 1: So what do you do when you put everything on
27:39
Speaker 1: the line to become a great chocolate maker, and you
27:41
Speaker 1: find yourself making terrible chocolate, Well you need a goog,
27:46
Speaker 1: someone who could bind deep expertise with almost spiritual insight.
27:50
Speaker 1: So Louisa summoned up her courage and sent a bar
27:53
Speaker 1: to our old friend Mark Christian. It was a qualified disaster.
28:00
Speaker 1: We don't need to get into all the particular details
28:02
Speaker 1: of flaws. They were manifold, you know. Yep, her bar
28:06
Speaker 1: sucked and he told her so. But hang on, there
28:09
Speaker 1: was a shiny silver lining. You can see through the
28:13
Speaker 1: beans right, No matter how poorly they're prepped, whatever their
28:17
Speaker 1: post harvest is and so forth, the d NA, the
28:21
Speaker 1: backbone of those seeds is still there. And what struck
28:27
Speaker 1: me about that cacao and that bar she made It
28:32
Speaker 1: was good enough that I thought this was the ultimate
28:36
Speaker 1: dark milk chocolate, potentially without any dairy whatsoever. That's how
28:42
Speaker 1: much it was cream puffing the oral chamber. Sorry, if
28:46
Speaker 1: you've never had your oral chamber cream puffed, you might
28:49
Speaker 1: not be familiar with the experience. But in the world
28:52
Speaker 1: of chocolate, or at least the world of Mark Christian,
28:55
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. Um, all that you know, earthen
29:01
Speaker 1: milk dairy cream, and who doesn't like cream? I mean,
29:06
Speaker 1: you know, you know, everybody likes cream. Everybody likes mama. Right,
29:13
Speaker 1: So it was great, but it was masked. I mean,
29:16
Speaker 1: you you had you could get the cream, but you
29:20
Speaker 1: were getting a lot of other detritus with it, like
29:23
Speaker 1: what you were getting the basics, such as um, cardboard, chalk,
29:30
Speaker 1: maybe even the black board itself was throwing. It was
29:36
Speaker 1: all there. In other words, it's not you and it's
29:39
Speaker 1: not your beans either. They seem kind of great, but
29:43
Speaker 1: what's up with that fermentation? I told them there's something
29:47
Speaker 1: there in that valley. You don't let it go, you know,
29:51
Speaker 1: Let's get this right. Mark's recommendation was fix that fermentation,
29:55
Speaker 1: get rid of all that funky ammonia, and you might
29:58
Speaker 1: have something really special on your hands. So how do
30:00
Speaker 1: you fix that? Well, remember Harvey kit Tell's character in
30:06
Speaker 1: pulp fiction, the Cleaner. I saw problems. You need that
30:12
Speaker 1: guy for cacao. It's funny. I almost feel guilty for
30:15
Speaker 1: showing up and be like, seriously, this is what you
30:18
Speaker 1: guys do. And he exists. Dan o'darty lives in Hawaii,
30:22
Speaker 1: but he spends most of his time zipping around the
30:24
Speaker 1: planet saving Cacal farmers from their own mistakes. Mark told
30:27
Speaker 1: Louisa that Dan could make her problems go away. So
30:30
Speaker 1: Louisa invited Dan to her factory and showed him the
30:32
Speaker 1: cruise beans right away from the aroma, but also the
30:36
Speaker 1: very dark, almost black, and the color. I knew that
30:38
Speaker 1: there were problems. I mean, over from Kao has this
30:43
Speaker 1: funky you know barn ardi. Um. I mean I describe
30:47
Speaker 1: it as you know, somewhat manure, you know, like like
30:50
Speaker 1: like cow manure smells um, I mean it tastes rotten.
30:55
Speaker 1: So he started with some questions. How often do you
30:57
Speaker 1: harvest the trees? What level of ripeness do you select?
31:00
Speaker 1: What is the lag time between cutting a fruit from
31:03
Speaker 1: the tree opening it? Is there a delay between opening
31:06
Speaker 1: it and putting it into a box to ferment? How
31:09
Speaker 1: often do you turn it? How long do you ferment it?
31:13
Speaker 1: And how do you dry it? And and there's even
31:15
Speaker 1: more substeps, and in Perus, the answer to pretty much
31:19
Speaker 1: every one of those questions was wrong. These boats are
31:23
Speaker 1: going up and down the river and collecting whole pods.
31:28
Speaker 1: Some guys would take their pods, collect them in the
31:30
Speaker 1: forest and put them on the river banks and they
31:33
Speaker 1: just roast in the sun. Not good. Basically, it was
31:36
Speaker 1: all amiss. The ayahuasca cult was picking overripe pods, and
31:40
Speaker 1: then they were waiting too long to open the pods,
31:42
Speaker 1: and then they were over fermenting the seeds. And Dan
31:45
Speaker 1: had to break the news to them. You know, you
31:47
Speaker 1: have to be gentle when you tell people. I mean, essentially,
31:50
Speaker 1: what you've been doing all this time is wrong. We're
31:53
Speaker 1: going to change pretty much every step. Every step. Pick
31:57
Speaker 1: the pods earlier, open them right away, get those beans
32:00
Speaker 1: in the fermentation boxes, unplugged the holes in the bottoms
32:03
Speaker 1: of the boxes so they can drain, turn the piles
32:06
Speaker 1: every day, keep them covered with banana leaves. But they
32:09
Speaker 1: did it all, and when the new beans were ready,
32:12
Speaker 1: Louisa tried not to get her hopes up. She just
32:15
Speaker 1: made her chocolate like always. Then. I remember when I
32:19
Speaker 1: first cat the chocolate in my mouth, it was like
32:24
Speaker 1: it was like a drug. Oh it was amazing. I mean,
32:33
Speaker 1: has like straight up dried blueberry notes like I had.
32:36
Speaker 1: People tasted. They didn't I didn't prime them with anything,
32:40
Speaker 1: and they were like, oh my god, it tastes like
32:43
Speaker 1: you round dried blueberries into it. Finally, Louisa had a
32:47
Speaker 1: fantastic new chocolate on her hands, and her company took off.
32:51
Speaker 1: She added three other chocolates to her line, each coming
32:53
Speaker 1: from a different Amazonian community with its own wild cocoutries,
32:57
Speaker 1: and as it turned out, she had dialed her skills
33:00
Speaker 1: just in time, because the kind of opportunity every Beamed
33:04
Speaker 1: Bar chocolate maker dreams of was about to come her way,
33:08
Speaker 1: and he was going to take everything She had to
33:10
Speaker 1: pull it off. Next week on Obsessions Wild Chocolate, Man,
33:22
Speaker 1: you must have been furious at a lot of people.
33:25
Speaker 1: I had a little It was a sectional rage and
33:32
Speaker 1: a pure rage. I would you know, with a gun
33:36
Speaker 1: in my hands, that would have killed some people maybe, yeah,
33:41
Speaker 1: Vulcar Layman. After years of dodging bullet after bullet in
33:44
Speaker 1: the jungle, he was about to take one right in
33:47
Speaker 1: the heart. Wild Chocolate is a Kaleidoscope production with I
33:57
Speaker 1: Heart Podcasts, posted and reported by me Row Jacobson and
34:00
Speaker 1: produced by Shane McKeon at Nice Marmat Media, Edited by
34:04
Speaker 1: Kate Osborne and Mangesh haut A Kudor, sound design and
34:07
Speaker 1: mixing by Soundboard. Original music composition by Spencer Stevenson a
34:11
Speaker 1: k a Botton production help from Baheeny Shorty from My Heart.
34:16
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Katrina Norvelle and Nikki Etre. Special
34:20
Speaker 1: thanks to Laura Mayor Costas, lnos Ozwalash and Aaron Kaufman,
34:24
Speaker 1: Will Pearson, codel Burn, Bob Pittman, Daria Daniel and the
34:29
Speaker 1: team at Stetler who are helping us make a very
34:31
Speaker 1: special chocolate of our own. That's right, We're working with
34:34
Speaker 1: Louisa at others to protect the rainforest and make delicious
34:37
Speaker 1: Amazonian chocolate. Visit www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com
34:43
Speaker 1: to taste it for yourself. That's www Dot Stetler dash
34:47
Speaker 1: Chocolate dot com. And if you want to hear more
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