Every day, Caputo’s strives to move the craft food needle in meaningful ways. When we are able to see this impact play out on a global scale, it fills our hearts with pride. Chocolate has been an avenue for us to explore our impact from the very beginning, and we’re excited to see and share the ways that it has grown. Our wild cacao series (Juruá by Luisa Abram, Tranquilidad by Ritual) is a labor of love, a story of adventure, and has many tales to tell behind the bars.
Follow Luisa Abram on this visual journey of wild tree to bar chocolate
Rowan Jacobsen is a renowned American food writer and journalist who has been exploring, documenting, and moving the craft food needle in his own myriad of ways for years. His explicit focus on documentary storytelling and avoidance of instruction or cookbook style explanation has set him apart from the rest. The author of eight books, his writing has also been featured in The New York Times, Newsweek, Food & Wine, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Audubon, Best American Science & Nature Writing, and Best Food Writing collections. He has also appeared on CBS, NBC, and NPR as an expert guest. All that without a mention of his multiple James Beard Awards.
When he puts his mind to a project, we trust the story will be told in full. When we learned he was making a multi-episode series on the history of wild chocolate, we were excited to see what we had left to learn.
Obsessions: Wild Chocolate is Rowan Jacobsen’s deep dive into the recent history of craft chocolate. From indigenous communities deep in the Amazon rainforest to small shops trying to pave the way for a new market, Jacobsen does an exceptional job painting all the players in this plot. Our very own Matt Caputo is good friends with Rowan, and was featured on Episode 4: The Awakening in a discussion of how the craft chocolate revolution swept our country.
Every gold rush brings winners and losers, and the craft chocolate revolution was no different. A lot of dinosaurs fell by the wayside, too slow to react to the shift in taste, and a few nimble players rushed in to fill the gap. Most surprising of all was the small deli in Salt Lake City that came out of nowhere to become the ultimate champion of wild chocolate.
– Rowan Jacobsen
As the story goes deeper, we weren’t surprised, but quite delighted to learn that Rowan had teamed up with another friend of Caputo’s – Volker Lehmann. Volker has been hunting for wild and rare cacao for years, and his journeys have brought him to remote, dangerous, and unique places. He left his home in Germany for Bolivia in the early 2000s and hasn’t looked back since. One of the kings of wild cacao cultivation, he is one of the main players behind our Wild Tranquilidad chocolate bar and has been working to protect this rare cacao since its identification back in 2014.
With their powers combined, Rowan and Volker tell a compelling story of drugs, morality, and the fight to protect wild cacao. The eight episode series covers all corners of the globe and includes important conversations with everyone from farmers deep in the jungle to consumers appreciating this now closely protected art. We’re proud to be a small part of the chocolate revolution, and we’re excited to share this resource with you – our beautiful and curious friends.
Listen to Volker and Rowan to learn about our mission around wild cacao (including Caputo’s Wild Juruá bar by Luisa Abram) in the iHeart Radio podcast OBSESSIONS: Wild Chocolate!