Word: criollo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...simple bean of the Venezuelan criollo--source of what many connoisseurs consider chocolate's gold standard--had been on the verge of extinction. But here on the Monterosa plantation near the town of Choroní, a small group of entrepreneurs and laborers has dedicated itself to making sure the bean flourishes once more. Monterosa's owner, Kai Rosenberg, has devoted the past 20 years to resurrecting the criollo strain and its gene base. "After I survived a rampant cancer, I decided I was going to do what I really loved," he says. "I used to be in insurance. Can you imagine...
...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, nervous Venezuelan farmers began crossing the criollo with...
...businessmen like Rosenberg have recently been spurred on by a growing global market for fine, dark, single-origin (unblended with other varieties) chocolate. Europe and the U.S. account for an almost 40% 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...