Word: cacao
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...world's boutique chocolate shops. I'm hiking through dense, rain-forest-like vegetation near Venezuela's central coast, shooing away mosquitoes and unsuccessfully dodging spiky palm trees. And yet, as a full-fledged chocoholic, I don't mind: I'm about to find the world's best cacao. A couple more meters down the trail, I see it. Not an especially tall tree, nothing majestic--just the bearer of the divine criollo bean...
...ancient people of the Yucatán Peninsula were the first to crush cacao into what was later known as xocolatl--what Rosenberg calls the champagne of the Maya and Aztecs--a frothy beverage reserved for the élite and for special occasions. The Spanish took chocolate back to Europe in the 16th century, discovering the pristine and aromatic criollo bean in Venezuela along the way. Until the 19th century, Venezuela produced solely criollo cacao, which satisfied more than half the world's demand for chocolate. But when an infestation came close to wiping out all the cacao in neighboring Trinidad...
...increase in demand in the past three years. The challenge for Rosenberg and other criollo growers now is to make the plantations viable enterprises. Yet modernity hasn't quite arrived at the Monterosa hacienda, set in the tropical forest of the Henri Pittier National Park. Workers here are drying cacao much the same way they have for 250 years...
...Cacao is among the world's most labor-intensive crops. Harvested fruit is sliced open with machetes, and the seeds are then scooped out by hand, placed in fermentation boxes and covered with banana leaves for three to four days. "Technology-wise, we haven't left the 18th century," says Rosenberg. "It is a process that cannot be industrialized." Silvino Reyes, who owns another hacienda, La Concepción, agrees: "Although Venezuelan cacao can sell for close to $2,500 per ton, our production level is the same as three centuries ago." That is, about 15,000 tons a year...
...many as 30 kids watching the pot boil,†Wilson said. When I met with him, he was stirring a pot of murky water with muslin sacks of barley bobbing near the surface. He was making a porter to be dry hopped with cacao and vanilla beans. Not quite Natty...