November 30, 2022 • 39 mins
When a Brazilian prodigy discovers a wild new strain of cacao, she can’t tame the flavor, until a mysterious fixer shows up at her door with a plan. Want some of this god-level chocolate? Kaleidoscope has joined forces with Luisa Abram and Stettler Chocolate to make a special box to go along with this very podcast. Just visit: www.stettler-chocolate.com to order your wild chocolate today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
How did you sleep? First nights are always at the heart.
That's good, that's a truthful answer. It's an early February
morning on the banks of the Jervois River in Brazil,
not far from the Peruvian border. I'm with Louise Abram
(00:33):
and her dad Andre, and we're here on a simple mission, really,
just try and save the most fragrant chocolate on earth
from total extinction. We just arrived last night, after a
full day of travel by planes and small boat, and
after a rough night in a basic hut. We're moving
a little slow as we take stock of the situation.
The story of this mission goes back a few years.
(00:55):
Luisa had just dialed in her technique for producing great
chocolate from wild cacao beans when a nonprofit called s
O s Amazonia that works to protect the Amazon It's
people came to her with a plea. They had just
found cocao growing along the banks of the Jeroa River
in a pristine area where the people had almost no
source of income. Would she considered working with them? No
(01:16):
one had ever tried making chocolate with this cacao, so
of course she couldn't resist. She flew north clear across
Brazil and checked out the trees. The pods were tiny
with deep ridges, the seeds inside were really smaller, and
when I saw it, I was just like, I think
we found something different here. Because it was just so unique.
(01:40):
They collected samples and rushed them off to the U.
S d A for analysis, and scientists couldn't get back
to them fast enough. They were like, oh, this is
a new thing, you know, like you guys really found different,
not just a new thing, but a wildly new thing
in geography, genetics, and flavor was on a different plane
it every other cacao here in this forgotten tributary of
(02:03):
the Amazon, they had struck gold. It was just so
mesmerized by it. I wanted to show every word this
Judaha is something else. It's it's a floral bouquet. I
don't love it. One of the first to get his
taste foods on it was chocolate critic Mark Christian. It
(02:25):
was sort of like, yeah, bring this on, okay, Now
we're finding things, you know, We're find stuff. This is
what it's about, you know, rediscovery. And if Mark was entranced,
Matt Capuda was downright obsessed. It almost had this note
of perfume, things like annis sassafras, like almost jasmine blossom,
(02:48):
but also like tropical fruit notes like in one year,
I got samples from over four chocolate companies and I
have to evaluate them. You get kind of jaded. And
then to taste something like Louisa's judua that is just
completely singular, and it was just it was intoxicating in
a way. But the Jiuis River was so remote and
(03:12):
there were so few people to do the work that
was almost impossible to get the beans picked, fermented, and shipped.
But fortunately for Louisa, Matt Caputo became a champion of
the bar, buying the meager supply and building a cult
following for it in the US as a librarian of
disappearing in exotic flavors. This was exactly the kind of
masterpiece Matt wanted to keep alive. Then came epic flooding
(03:38):
on the Jeruis River. The people were just scrambling for
survival and there was no way to harvest. And as
if that wasn't bad enough, then COVID struck and the
specialty chocolate market tanked. Louise's dream was now on life support.
The family had to make a decision, and in pat
received a long email from Louise's father Andre. Their chocolate
(04:00):
sales were taking a beating. They were leveraged with some
loans and had big time financial struggles fighting for survival.
They had to drop any project that was losing money,
and that meant they had to give up on Gera.
It was just too expensive, too hard, and so they
had to let their biggest cheerleader down. My heart just
(04:22):
sank and I felt like I got punched in the gut.
They felt like, these goals that we have, no matter
how hard we push, we there's just too many pressures
that we can't control, and we're doomed to fail. What
are we going to do? We're just a deli insult
like we're going to change the whole food system, you know.
It feels like we're tilting at windmills. Louise's little venture
seemed destined to fail, and yet here I am two
(04:47):
years later, in the heart of the Amazon, watching her
take the fight to those windmills. What are your other
plans for the day, Well, I have a cup of
coffee from the little porch of our hut. Would in
our coffee and peer out at the world before us
a sliver of ground between the river and the swamp.
Pigs and chickens weave between banana trees and wander under huts,
(05:09):
harassed by an old dog a few yards away. The
river swollen with storm water, a milk chocolate monster churning
with gigantic trees and root balls and drising every day,
and that means we only have a few days to
pull off a miracle. Louisa is here to show face
established connections, teach a fermentation workshop, and convince the homesteaders
(05:31):
that wild Coco could be a great part of their future,
because there's another version of their future that's full of
chainsaws and cattle ranches, which is true throughout the Amazon,
and Louisa is trying to do her small part to
head that off. The good news there are four two
freshly picked pods waiting for us to use in the workshop.
(05:52):
The family spent all day picking yesterday, so they're at
least curious. But the bad news is that we have
to get the beans for menut and dry before water
swamps everything. It's going to be a high wire act
in this part of the Amazon. The accommodations tend to
be spartan, We're staying at the homestead of a guy
named Zay. He's a strong, wiry guy in his forties
(06:18):
and shorts and bare feet like most rebering Yo's, as
river dwellers are called in Brazil. He has no electricity
or out house. The only drinking water is whatever gets
caught off the roof, and the only bathing is to
stand in the muddy swamp behind the lot and scoop
pots some water over your head. Say warns us that
anytime you're standing in the swamp, watch out for portaque
(06:41):
giant electric eels. That's not encouraging, but he also says
that when the moon is full, a goddess rises out
of the river and the river dolphins dance around her.
So I chalk it up to Amazonian superstitions until Okay,
they apparently just caught an electric eel. So he's taking
me down to the river. Let stick look at it.
(07:04):
I'd actually heard that there were electric geels in the Amazon,
but for some reason in my head I pictured tiny
things like maybe a foot long. Instead. Oh my god,
it's a river minster. I am so not swimming in
the river anymore. Holy Moly, he's got a tape measure out.
It's like a seven foot sandworm, as thick as a
(07:27):
ship cable, a huge mountain. Andre and Louisa are right
on my heels. This is so huge. Have you ever
seen one like this? This is huge? Ter forget the
(07:49):
piranhas the crocodiles piannacondas, because eight points to the beast
and says this is the most dangerous animal in the
small It's even shocked by the when did it feel
like costin Greek? Yeah, you can make a good but
then the white point. Yeah, if you don't take a
(08:10):
person out of the water, the poor k going on
top over the chest and specificly chest, Gonna give you
another another electric chocolate? Really finished? God? Yeah? So apparently
these eels like to pile on your chest like linebackers
electric linebackers, and they like to hunt in packs. So
(08:32):
whatever we managed to get accomplished this week, it's not
going to include bathing from Kaleidoscope and I Hard podcasts.
This is Obsessions wild Chocolate. I'm rowing Jake's chapter six,
The Gospel Chocolate. One by one, we hear the pucka
(09:16):
pucka of tiny outboards approaching, and soon we're joined by
about a dozen reburying yves. Louisa is psyched. She and
Andre sent money in advance to pay for harvesting and
for the construction of a new fermentation shed. The reburying
yeves have been living off the grid for generations. Say
his parents came here from eastern Brazil during one of
the rubber booms, tapping wild rubber trees for the latex sap.
(09:38):
Once the rubber busts followed, they stayed living off the land.
They grow their own food, build their own shacks, and
make a little cash by fishing and gathering murumuru, a
local palm nut that's rich in kisomnic oils. They like
to keep things Simplecao would be a lot more responsibility
with the fermenting and drying, and so far they're not
convinced it's worth the effort. Yes, they picked and delivered
(10:01):
these pods yesterday, and yes a few have shown up
for the workshop to meet Louisa, but they're skeptical. And
let's be honest, there's one real reason why these families
that put their daily lives on hold, why they spent
the day before slogging through the wet jungle picking pods.
Why there's a brand new shed in the middle of
Day's compound, piled with little golden footballs, and that reason
(10:24):
is cash in. When floods and COVID forced everyone to
pull back, Louisa and Andre took a different approach. We
almost gave up, almost, But then Matt was the one
that was like, no, you can't totalize. Just too good,
it's just just special, Like I'm just going to help you, guys,
(10:48):
just please don't give up. So the whole reason that
we kept on coming back, it was because of him.
Yes we're here. Because Matt Capooda fell so deeply in
love with Louise's Gerwabar that they couldn't let it go.
It was my favorite bar. And I thought to myself, like,
you know what, what if we prepaid them for the
(11:10):
next harvest? Now it was a crazy suggestion. Even if
the cash came through, the timeline was against them, and
Andrea is like, what are you talking about? It will
take like two years for you to get chocolate. Just
to be clear, the number of times that a retailer
offers to prepay a chocolate maker two years in advance
is uh, let me see here. Uh. Never. Usually producers
(11:33):
have to chase retailers for months to get paid. It
was the kind of risk sharing Vulker Lahman it soft
for years and never found it was such a crazy offer.
Andre didn't know what to think. He just kind of
dismissed it, like, that's not a possibility. I'm like, no,
no, no no, what if we were patient? What would it take?
And he was. He basically came back with like, well,
it would take seven thousand dollars. And I said to myself, like, well,
(11:56):
Carpudos isn't that big of a company. But at the
same time, seven thousand dollars to say, one of the
world's great foods and MCDA, Amazon more resilient. That just
couldn't get the idea out of his head. And I
was definitely did some soul searching as to whether it
was a good idea to send, you know, a good
chunk of money out the door. And I but I
(12:17):
talked to my wife about it and said, you know,
if it's at these times when you really see what
you stand for. We love these people, we believe in
our mission, and we had an opportunity and if we
didn't take it, even if it was going to be
a loss, if we didn't take it, then we're we
don't practice what we preach. Matt also did something else
(12:44):
you won't find in your business textbook. He said, I
want you to charge to be more for every bar.
That's right, raise my prices and then turn around and
pay the people more. Louis and Andre crunch the numbers
and decided that if they really to get there burinos
on board, they were going to have to pay eight
dollars for a kilo of dry coco, twice as much
(13:07):
as any other cocaw on the planet, and five times
where an African farmer gets. And with Matt's help, they
actually had the opportunity to do that. So they did,
and with that move, Louisa and Andre and Matt flipped
Big Chocolate's playbook on its head. Instead of selling cheap
chocolate to unknown customers and grinding farmers into poverty to
(13:28):
make the numbers work, they decided to pay their partners
well and count on consumers to care enough to buy it.
Will that work? We got our first inklings after the break.
(13:57):
Here's your chance to be one of those carrying consumers
who is the pouring the Amazon by eating this super rare,
super tasty chocolate We've teamed up with Louise Abram and
Stetler Chocolate to create a special tasting box with Jerwa
River Chocolate and two more of Louise's special creations. Go
to www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com to order
(14:18):
a box. Link in the show notes. Here's a fun fact.
There's a tiny fly in the Amazon called a plum
(14:41):
that everybody dreads from dawn to dust. The PM feast
on all exposed body parts and raise red welts that
it's like insanity itself and the worst spot in the
entire Amazon for pum. Yes, that's right, the Jeri River.
Even other hardcore Amazonians avoid the area because of the bugs.
But here we are swarms of pam shredding our necks
(15:04):
and ankles. As we all gather in the open sided
shed for the pod breaking workshop. It still smells a
fresh lumber. It's basically just a platform on stilts with
a roof overhead, but in the Amazon, roofs and stilts
are everything. There's a mix of men and women sitting
around the mountain of cacao pods in the middle. It
looks like smogs treasure pile. We grab wooden clubs and
(15:26):
start thumping pods. As Louisa walks us through it. The
pods break open with the satisfying pop, and we scooped
the slimy pulp and beans into buckets. Oh. Louisa directs
a lot of her teaching towards the women who have come,
and during a break, I asked why, I think paid
more attention. And also here in the Amazon, most of
(15:52):
the work and most of the income comes from the men.
So with this selection, we can make the how harvests
more I guess, um, what's the what's the name? More inclosive.
When the buckets are full, we poured the beans into
hip high wooden boxes. The boxes have holes in the
(16:14):
bottoms of the juice can drain now, and local bees
have already found it. Zay, our host, built these boxes
to Louise's exact specifications. But he's eyeing this whole scene skeptically.
He's never paid attention to a cow, never tasted chocolate
until Louisa brought her bars for everyone to try. And
Andre's impression is that he's going to need a lot
(16:37):
of convincing. I didn't feel he he was, you know,
troup confident that this thing would work, no plick put
or to be a hide. A little female fish that
was like, I don't know, you know this thing, we
will mess with my you know fish going to good
(17:02):
catches the river. This is what they're up against. It's
one thing to continue a how tradition that has lasted
for centuries. It's another to build one from scratch. Nobody
here has any romantic attachment to chocolate. They just have
one very practical question, how is this going to improve
my life? In a few hours, the pods are all
(17:22):
broken and the boxes are full and starting to ferment
in the steamy Amazon air. Each day Louisa Andre have
to come back and turn the mass, scooping it into
a new box and mixing the hot center and the
cougar edges to the fermentation. Evens out. Three of the
people at the workshop turn out to be from s
OS Amazonia, the nonprofit that first alerted Louisa to the
existence of this shiar wakako. They're here to learn the
(17:45):
techniques and teach them to other communities even deeper in
the back country, and so as just trying to open
two more origins up prefer But they don't they don't
know the Cacao Chainou the protocols, so they came to
um learn with us. All of the collegues coming up
(18:06):
is going to come for me. So that's not maybe
the Queen of Amazon. Oh yeah, that's the main goal,
I guess. The s O s Amazonia guys are young,
born in the Amazon and familiar with its ways, and
Louisa says she couldn't do this without them, and so
as really helps a lot of people here. Yeah, everywhere
(18:30):
they go they're like welcomed. So it's really good to
be with them because then whenever we're arrive in somewhere
like new place, they're like, oh, they're with us, and
that's really important here in a region where activists are
often killed. A few months after our visit in this
(18:51):
same region, a British journalist and the indigenous rites activists
he's working with will be murdered by a legal fisherman.
Anything goes in the Amazon, and the life expectancy isn't
high for anyone who challenges the illegal loggers, miners, ranchers
and fishermen. But somehow ss Amazonia is making it work.
(19:12):
The hope is that with their help, what Louise is
doing here will start a wild cocow movement that can
spread clear across the Amazon. We break for lunch, then
head to the boat for our afternoon mission, looking for
new recruits to produce enough chocolate to make the Jerwabar
a real thing. Louisa needs more help, so we're going
to visit each homestead on the river and hope she
(19:33):
can work her magic. Our craft is a long, skinny
boat with rows of benches like little pews. It feels
like a theme park ride or the kind of thing
missionaries would have used back in the day, And suddenly
occurs to me that Louise and Andre are basically Coco
missionaries bringing the gospel of chocolate to the Amazon. At
(19:54):
each stop along the river, faces peer out of the
windows at our mysterious entourage. But each time we doc
people choose to listen were never turned away. Everyone collects
on the cabin floor and sprawls out as Louisa makes
her pitch. Yeah that was great. Actually, like this family
has like a lot of people, so they have a
(20:14):
lot of potential to get more pods. Yeah, I look
like they're a bunch of kids there, and yeah, it
has a nice vibe to it. It's amazing. Pretty much
everyone is on board fourth family and that was nice.
They so far they are the winning family. They got
(20:34):
three hundred pods in one day and they said that
if they had more time they would have caught more.
So that's a win. And they're pretty excited about cacao.
As we head back to day's that evening, I can
feel the hole Jiwa dream becoming real. The pickers are
all in, but now we need the fermentors, someone to
(20:58):
run the station where everyone will drop off their beans
and get paid. It's a much bigger commitment. And while
they agreed to build the drawing shed and even put
us up for a few days, so far he's still
a firm. Now you're turning the box in layers, so
(21:44):
we don't really like dig a hole in the box.
We try to do it in layers because by doing
it in this way we can make sure that we
are cooking all the layers. Even for the next few days.
(22:05):
Louisa keeps teaching using the special protocol she developed for
the middle of Nowhere in more developed places. Pickow fermentation
relies on a lot of gadgets, thermometers to measure heat,
refractometers to see the level of sugar in the juice.
But in the jungle, things break and batteries die. If
a battery dies, you are four hours away by boot
(22:25):
from the next city. Are you going to go and
go there just to get the battery? Oh? The fermentation,
please stop because I don't have a battery here. You know,
like it's it doesn't work like that. So um, we're like, okay,
let's just go buy the field smell tasting visual and
(22:50):
the field the warmth. She developed her own low tech
Amazonian protocol. I was like, well, the temperature of your
body is X. If you get in get in there
and the temperature feels higher, it's because the temperature is
(23:10):
higher than thirty seven celsius. Because your your body tempature
is thirty seven. If the temperature feels lower, it's because
the metabolism of the whole mass is going down. And
then smelling, oh look this alcohol smells really volatile. And
then vinegar you almost want to cry when you when
(23:34):
you like smell a lot of vinegar. So we slowly
we had a protocol where they don't needed any gadgets
to make a good being. Honestly, it's a total game
changer for places like this Instead of fermentation being totally
(23:55):
intimidating for people who aren't used to high tech gadgetry,
the process becomes intuitive, it even fun. One person who's
totally uninterested is z Andering. Louisa had him hanged as
the guy to run this momentation center, but he often
wanders away during the workshop. But as it turns out,
we don't have to look far for a solution. Mic
(24:16):
On his son is asking lots of good questions. Mica
And is twenty, a handsome kid with an earring and
stylish haircut. He blended seamlessly on streets of any city,
and you can tell he's got his eye on the
larger world. But he also loves life on the river.
So after the workshop we asked him what he thinks
(24:40):
people sash dasha ki. Yeah, it's so good, not too
not too much work. No, no, I'm going to defease you.
It's difficult because it's new, but the movement. As as
(25:02):
time passes, he will He is sure that he can
handle this process. How many boxes do you think you
can handle? People said, Fuzzy wash five. That would be
(25:23):
about KOs of dried cacao, enough for a few thousand bars.
A good start. Later, when we're alone, Andre tells me
where my CON's interest in Cacao comes from. He said
that maybe there's a lot of over fishing. Every year
there's a migration of the fish upstream up river, and
(25:45):
he said that nowadays they have like a thousand boats
waiting for the fish. Yeah, Michael ZiLs, but not not
that many fish. And so he was really really hopeful
that Kao could will become eventually something that would be
bigger than fishing here, and it was. The problem is
(26:09):
actually pretty devastating. Fish stocks throughout the Amazon are collapsing
in the face of overfishing and climate change. The Amazon
is the greatest abundance and diversity of freshwater fish in
the world and that has always been the foundation of
rivers diet and income. And when it goes they often
go with him and the loggers and ranchers move in.
(26:30):
So I can see why my con is so laser focused.
And he said they were gonna work hot for that
to happen bec become a major source of income in here,
which was the very first time that I heard someone
from from from here so enthusiastic, and so I think
(26:51):
all are responsive about it. Is even bigger. He was really,
you know, counting on us. If the community can band
together with Louisa to preserve this wild cacao, it might
(27:13):
just help them hang on. But for that to even
be a possibility, the team has to make it to
the finish line on this workshop, and Louisa, she's starting
to flag for good reason. It's been seven years since
we come to different communities in the Amazon, but it
(27:33):
has never been so tough for me. Um I'm pregnant today,
is actually twelve weeks pregnant, and first timemester is just
I don't know, morning sickness, and to be here in
(27:55):
this time of my pregnancy has been tough. I'm not
gonna lie, And of course I can't say what it's
like to be fighting back morning sickness while you're getting
mauled by pium and you're trying to stay positive about
your cow works job. But I'm just going to go
out on the limb and guess that it's not ideal
(28:17):
and that to pull it off, you gotta believe. I
can't help but think back to Louise's Aiahuasca awakening, her
understanding that the forest and the people are one and
her commitment to total partnership with the Amazon, and yet
right now the Amazon is being a bit of an asshole.
The rains are pounding, which drops the temperature, and that
(28:39):
slows down the fermentation, which means the beans might not
be done by tomorrow morning. But we have to leave
tomorrow because there's no other flight out of Cruzaro for days.
But if Louise has to leave before she can show
everyone the final steps, that could endanger the whole experiment.
And more urgently, the river and the swamp behind the
shack are rising so fast that it's not clear we'll
(29:01):
have any ground to stand on by tomorrow. Still, as
we huddle in our cabin staring out at the rain,
Andre says he's glad we can't we make this big
bat that's raising our prices. Who would be engaged? More people?
And did Uh? I was really surprised that they could
build up fermenting am fermenting place, a place, a ferment total.
(29:28):
Uh moved the boxes so so fast it's like a month.
So I think Michael understood that here's an opportunity. I'm
not to get up. Let that gonna go through much fingers.
Let's works, Let's have a go. But that night the
(29:48):
Amazon has a go at us. It's a deluge all
night long. The river tears away chunks of the bank.
The swamp is now a lake lapping at the edge
of our cabin. It's somebody pulls a six ft anaconda
out of it, but nobody even cares. Sometime after midnight,
I hear the explosion of one of the huge trees
(30:08):
in the compound, carrying leaps in its breeks. So one queasy,
eternal second I wait to be crushed. Then the world
explodes with the sound of the tree crashing down nearby,
no direct hit. In the morning, an Amazonian giant stretches
(30:29):
dead across the compound. It was a narrow sky and
it's water water everywhere. The river is now as the
rivers requaimed all the land like, there's just water everywhere. Um,
there's very dry land for little walk on. We're supposed
to head back to turo Desul that um, but that
(30:55):
means a very long trip against the blow up river,
and were is just gonna be full of massive trees
tearing down stream um and doing so fast. I'm not
sure the boat's gonna be able to do it. Louisa
is concerned too. I'm so worried because we're growing on
(31:16):
the river today. That's what I was talking about all night. Um,
that river is just gonna be scammering and we have
to go up river. I hope the rain stops today
because if it doesn't, we are not flying tomorrow. Honestly,
it feels grim. But then this guy is suddenly part
(31:40):
for brief window and we take advantage. We scramble over
the soggy ground the drying racks so Louisa can demonstrate
the last step in the process, scooching through the spread
out beans with your feet to push them into long
rows for better drying off. In the Nac just scooched
through the beans with her feet, gucci along the way
(32:00):
to make channels and ridges things. But as she rushes
through the process, mike On has some final questions. Later,
Louisa gives me the lowdown. He thought it was quite
easy and doable, which is always great. Um. He also
(32:25):
asked how many days I thought it would take? Okay,
how many days? I said between ten and twelve days.
They want to take a picture. No, that sound you
here is not a swarm of bees. It's a drone.
(32:48):
Louise's team brought it along and it's time for the
group photo, and then we scramble for the boat and
push up river against the current. Well I think we
got out, just like the last chopper out. Yeah, Oh
(33:12):
my god, your feet, you look like you've got Hannah tattoos.
New tattoo who is washing her feet in the river
as we are hanging off in the boat. This is, uh,
what's over? A new moment in extreme pick O. The
(33:35):
storms return and we huddle under the boats, torn to heart,
but our pilot is faced first into the down war
for hours, dodging the trees that comes flailing down the current,
any of them could capsuize us. But half a day
later we straggle into trizero dosool like drowned rats. And
the day after that we're back in sound Paolo and
(33:56):
Louisa just has to cross her fingers. She's gone a
even beyond, and so has Matt And now it's in
the hands of the reburying news. They know what to do.
We just have to hope that their relationship with Louisa
is now deep enough and that the river cooperates. I
(34:24):
want to taste of some of this god level chocolate.
We got you covered. Kaleidoscope has joined forces with Louise
Abram and Stetler Chocolate to make a special box to
go along with this very podcast. Now you could sample
flavors from the banks of the Amazon without having to
fight off jaguars and anaconda's. Just visit www dot Stetler
Dash Chocolate dot com to order your wild Chocolate today
(34:46):
check the link in the show notes. A few months later,
get a zoom call from Louisa. Hello, Hey, Luisa, can
you hear your voice? How are you? I'm good? How
(35:08):
how's it going? After so much waiting, this was the
moment of truth and Louisa was calling me with the
verdict straight from her factory floor. I just got into
I never had so many beans in my factory, which
is very, very exciting. This just was an eighteen. We
(35:28):
had to klos this year. We got one point one ton,
so you double this is double that? Yeah, yeah, I
just opened too of the stacks and right off the bat,
(35:50):
I know that dish is my Jubi. They smell great.
I am beyond happy and hoping that everyone loved it. Honestly,
I was too Somewhere along the way I got invested.
I would have been heartbroken to see this cacao and
(36:12):
those Riverino's give way to cattle ranches. And if you
think we were happy, well there I am sitting in
my office, the same place where I got the email,
and Heather marketing coordinator walks in puts it on my
desk and I look up and she's got tears in
her eyes. Matt Caputo was over the moon. His crazy
(36:34):
seven thousand dollar bet had just paid off. I asked
Matt to walk me through the moment when there's your
wah bars first arrived. I was like, this is it,
and she's like, I'm just nodding her head. And so
I opened it up and I'm so nervous that I
pop it in my mouth and then the flavors open
up and everything that I love about Judua in the
(36:57):
past is there. I just know than ten seconds, this
is the best chocolate Louisa has ever made. This bar
doesn't taste like anything else anywhere in the world. You
know we did something where we we helped to preserve
this cacao, and I know the other like minded people
(37:21):
like me are going to appreciate this and to join
us in this fight, and the beautiful thing in this
fight is, you know, our weapons that we use, or
sharing stories and tastes of things that we love and
kind of spreading that love, chocolate and love. What could
(37:43):
possibly go better together? Right? I forgot chocolate and revenge.
So we agreed to catch catch the guys in Flagrante Forest.
How's that gonna happen? Yeah, he said he would need help,
(38:08):
and then we do an operation and we get the people. Yes,
just when you thought it was safe to go back
in Bolivia, it's the return of Vulcar next week on Obsessions.
Wild Chocolate. Wild Chocolate is a Kaleidoscope production with I
(38:33):
Heart Podcasts, hosted and reported by me Rowan Jacobson and
produced by Shane McKeith at Nice Marmot Media. Edited by
Kate Osbourne and my Guest how to Kudor, Sound design
and mixing by Sound Boring. Original music composition by Spencer Stevenson.
A k a Botany production helped from Baheni Shorty from
My Heart. Our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor.
(38:56):
Special thanks to Laura Mayor, Gustas Linos Oswalash and Aaron Kaffman,
Will Pearson, codel Burn, Bob Pittman, Daria Daniel, and the
team at Stetler who are helping us make a very
special chocolate of our own. That's right, We're working with
Louisa at others to protect the rainforest and make delicious
Amazonian chocolate. Visit www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com
(39:19):
to taste it for yourself. That's www dot Stetler dash
Chocolate dot com. And if you want to hear more
of this type of content. Nothing is more important to
the creators here at Kaleidoscope than subscribers, ratings, and reviews.
Please spread the up wherever you listen.
How did you sleep? First nights are always at the heart.
That's good, that's a truthful answer. It's an early February
morning on the banks of the Jervois River in Brazil,
not far from the Peruvian border. I'm with Louise Abram
(00:33):
and her dad Andre, and we're here on a simple mission, really,
just try and save the most fragrant chocolate on earth
from total extinction. We just arrived last night, after a
full day of travel by planes and small boat, and
after a rough night in a basic hut. We're moving
a little slow as we take stock of the situation.
The story of this mission goes back a few years.
(00:55):
Luisa had just dialed in her technique for producing great
chocolate from wild cacao beans when a nonprofit called s
O s Amazonia that works to protect the Amazon It's
people came to her with a plea. They had just
found cocao growing along the banks of the Jeroa River
in a pristine area where the people had almost no
source of income. Would she considered working with them? No
(01:16):
one had ever tried making chocolate with this cacao, so
of course she couldn't resist. She flew north clear across
Brazil and checked out the trees. The pods were tiny
with deep ridges, the seeds inside were really smaller, and
when I saw it, I was just like, I think
we found something different here. Because it was just so unique.
(01:40):
They collected samples and rushed them off to the U.
S d A for analysis, and scientists couldn't get back
to them fast enough. They were like, oh, this is
a new thing, you know, like you guys really found different,
not just a new thing, but a wildly new thing
in geography, genetics, and flavor was on a different plane
it every other cacao here in this forgotten tributary of
(02:03):
the Amazon, they had struck gold. It was just so
mesmerized by it. I wanted to show every word this
Judaha is something else. It's it's a floral bouquet. I
don't love it. One of the first to get his
taste foods on it was chocolate critic Mark Christian. It
(02:25):
was sort of like, yeah, bring this on, okay, Now
we're finding things, you know, We're find stuff. This is
what it's about, you know, rediscovery. And if Mark was entranced,
Matt Capuda was downright obsessed. It almost had this note
of perfume, things like annis sassafras, like almost jasmine blossom,
(02:48):
but also like tropical fruit notes like in one year,
I got samples from over four chocolate companies and I
have to evaluate them. You get kind of jaded. And
then to taste something like Louisa's judua that is just
completely singular, and it was just it was intoxicating in
a way. But the Jiuis River was so remote and
(03:12):
there were so few people to do the work that
was almost impossible to get the beans picked, fermented, and shipped.
But fortunately for Louisa, Matt Caputo became a champion of
the bar, buying the meager supply and building a cult
following for it in the US as a librarian of
disappearing in exotic flavors. This was exactly the kind of
masterpiece Matt wanted to keep alive. Then came epic flooding
(03:38):
on the Jeruis River. The people were just scrambling for
survival and there was no way to harvest. And as
if that wasn't bad enough, then COVID struck and the
specialty chocolate market tanked. Louise's dream was now on life support.
The family had to make a decision, and in pat
received a long email from Louise's father Andre. Their chocolate
(04:00):
sales were taking a beating. They were leveraged with some
loans and had big time financial struggles fighting for survival.
They had to drop any project that was losing money,
and that meant they had to give up on Gera.
It was just too expensive, too hard, and so they
had to let their biggest cheerleader down. My heart just
(04:22):
sank and I felt like I got punched in the gut.
They felt like, these goals that we have, no matter
how hard we push, we there's just too many pressures
that we can't control, and we're doomed to fail. What
are we going to do? We're just a deli insult
like we're going to change the whole food system, you know.
It feels like we're tilting at windmills. Louise's little venture
seemed destined to fail, and yet here I am two
(04:47):
years later, in the heart of the Amazon, watching her
take the fight to those windmills. What are your other
plans for the day, Well, I have a cup of
coffee from the little porch of our hut. Would in
our coffee and peer out at the world before us
a sliver of ground between the river and the swamp.
Pigs and chickens weave between banana trees and wander under huts,
(05:09):
harassed by an old dog a few yards away. The
river swollen with storm water, a milk chocolate monster churning
with gigantic trees and root balls and drising every day,
and that means we only have a few days to
pull off a miracle. Louisa is here to show face
established connections, teach a fermentation workshop, and convince the homesteaders
(05:31):
that wild Coco could be a great part of their future,
because there's another version of their future that's full of
chainsaws and cattle ranches, which is true throughout the Amazon,
and Louisa is trying to do her small part to
head that off. The good news there are four two
freshly picked pods waiting for us to use in the workshop.
(05:52):
The family spent all day picking yesterday, so they're at
least curious. But the bad news is that we have
to get the beans for menut and dry before water
swamps everything. It's going to be a high wire act
in this part of the Amazon. The accommodations tend to
be spartan, We're staying at the homestead of a guy
named Zay. He's a strong, wiry guy in his forties
(06:18):
and shorts and bare feet like most rebering Yo's, as
river dwellers are called in Brazil. He has no electricity
or out house. The only drinking water is whatever gets
caught off the roof, and the only bathing is to
stand in the muddy swamp behind the lot and scoop
pots some water over your head. Say warns us that
anytime you're standing in the swamp, watch out for portaque
(06:41):
giant electric eels. That's not encouraging, but he also says
that when the moon is full, a goddess rises out
of the river and the river dolphins dance around her.
So I chalk it up to Amazonian superstitions until Okay,
they apparently just caught an electric eel. So he's taking
me down to the river. Let stick look at it.
(07:04):
I'd actually heard that there were electric geels in the Amazon,
but for some reason in my head I pictured tiny
things like maybe a foot long. Instead. Oh my god,
it's a river minster. I am so not swimming in
the river anymore. Holy Moly, he's got a tape measure out.
It's like a seven foot sandworm, as thick as a
(07:27):
ship cable, a huge mountain. Andre and Louisa are right
on my heels. This is so huge. Have you ever
seen one like this? This is huge? Ter forget the
(07:49):
piranhas the crocodiles piannacondas, because eight points to the beast
and says this is the most dangerous animal in the
small It's even shocked by the when did it feel
like costin Greek? Yeah, you can make a good but
then the white point. Yeah, if you don't take a
(08:10):
person out of the water, the poor k going on
top over the chest and specificly chest, Gonna give you
another another electric chocolate? Really finished? God? Yeah? So apparently
these eels like to pile on your chest like linebackers
electric linebackers, and they like to hunt in packs. So
(08:32):
whatever we managed to get accomplished this week, it's not
going to include bathing from Kaleidoscope and I Hard podcasts.
This is Obsessions wild Chocolate. I'm rowing Jake's chapter six,
The Gospel Chocolate. One by one, we hear the pucka
(09:16):
pucka of tiny outboards approaching, and soon we're joined by
about a dozen reburying yves. Louisa is psyched. She and
Andre sent money in advance to pay for harvesting and
for the construction of a new fermentation shed. The reburying
yeves have been living off the grid for generations. Say
his parents came here from eastern Brazil during one of
the rubber booms, tapping wild rubber trees for the latex sap.
(09:38):
Once the rubber busts followed, they stayed living off the land.
They grow their own food, build their own shacks, and
make a little cash by fishing and gathering murumuru, a
local palm nut that's rich in kisomnic oils. They like
to keep things Simplecao would be a lot more responsibility
with the fermenting and drying, and so far they're not
convinced it's worth the effort. Yes, they picked and delivered
(10:01):
these pods yesterday, and yes a few have shown up
for the workshop to meet Louisa, but they're skeptical. And
let's be honest, there's one real reason why these families
that put their daily lives on hold, why they spent
the day before slogging through the wet jungle picking pods.
Why there's a brand new shed in the middle of
Day's compound, piled with little golden footballs, and that reason
(10:24):
is cash in. When floods and COVID forced everyone to
pull back, Louisa and Andre took a different approach. We
almost gave up, almost, But then Matt was the one
that was like, no, you can't totalize. Just too good,
it's just just special, Like I'm just going to help you, guys,
(10:48):
just please don't give up. So the whole reason that
we kept on coming back, it was because of him.
Yes we're here. Because Matt Capooda fell so deeply in
love with Louise's Gerwabar that they couldn't let it go.
It was my favorite bar. And I thought to myself, like,
you know what, what if we prepaid them for the
(11:10):
next harvest? Now it was a crazy suggestion. Even if
the cash came through, the timeline was against them, and
Andrea is like, what are you talking about? It will
take like two years for you to get chocolate. Just
to be clear, the number of times that a retailer
offers to prepay a chocolate maker two years in advance
is uh, let me see here. Uh. Never. Usually producers
(11:33):
have to chase retailers for months to get paid. It
was the kind of risk sharing Vulker Lahman it soft
for years and never found it was such a crazy offer.
Andre didn't know what to think. He just kind of
dismissed it, like, that's not a possibility. I'm like, no,
no, no no, what if we were patient? What would it take?
And he was. He basically came back with like, well,
it would take seven thousand dollars. And I said to myself, like, well,
(11:56):
Carpudos isn't that big of a company. But at the
same time, seven thousand dollars to say, one of the
world's great foods and MCDA, Amazon more resilient. That just
couldn't get the idea out of his head. And I
was definitely did some soul searching as to whether it
was a good idea to send, you know, a good
chunk of money out the door. And I but I
(12:17):
talked to my wife about it and said, you know,
if it's at these times when you really see what
you stand for. We love these people, we believe in
our mission, and we had an opportunity and if we
didn't take it, even if it was going to be
a loss, if we didn't take it, then we're we
don't practice what we preach. Matt also did something else
(12:44):
you won't find in your business textbook. He said, I
want you to charge to be more for every bar.
That's right, raise my prices and then turn around and
pay the people more. Louis and Andre crunch the numbers
and decided that if they really to get there burinos
on board, they were going to have to pay eight
dollars for a kilo of dry coco, twice as much
(13:07):
as any other cocaw on the planet, and five times
where an African farmer gets. And with Matt's help, they
actually had the opportunity to do that. So they did,
and with that move, Louisa and Andre and Matt flipped
Big Chocolate's playbook on its head. Instead of selling cheap
chocolate to unknown customers and grinding farmers into poverty to
(13:28):
make the numbers work, they decided to pay their partners
well and count on consumers to care enough to buy it.
Will that work? We got our first inklings after the break.
(13:57):
Here's your chance to be one of those carrying consumers
who is the pouring the Amazon by eating this super rare,
super tasty chocolate We've teamed up with Louise Abram and
Stetler Chocolate to create a special tasting box with Jerwa
River Chocolate and two more of Louise's special creations. Go
to www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com to order
(14:18):
a box. Link in the show notes. Here's a fun fact.
There's a tiny fly in the Amazon called a plum
(14:41):
that everybody dreads from dawn to dust. The PM feast
on all exposed body parts and raise red welts that
it's like insanity itself and the worst spot in the
entire Amazon for pum. Yes, that's right, the Jeri River.
Even other hardcore Amazonians avoid the area because of the bugs.
But here we are swarms of pam shredding our necks
(15:04):
and ankles. As we all gather in the open sided
shed for the pod breaking workshop. It still smells a
fresh lumber. It's basically just a platform on stilts with
a roof overhead, but in the Amazon, roofs and stilts
are everything. There's a mix of men and women sitting
around the mountain of cacao pods in the middle. It
looks like smogs treasure pile. We grab wooden clubs and
(15:26):
start thumping pods. As Louisa walks us through it. The
pods break open with the satisfying pop, and we scooped
the slimy pulp and beans into buckets. Oh. Louisa directs
a lot of her teaching towards the women who have come,
and during a break, I asked why, I think paid
more attention. And also here in the Amazon, most of
(15:52):
the work and most of the income comes from the men.
So with this selection, we can make the how harvests
more I guess, um, what's the what's the name? More inclosive.
When the buckets are full, we poured the beans into
hip high wooden boxes. The boxes have holes in the
(16:14):
bottoms of the juice can drain now, and local bees
have already found it. Zay, our host, built these boxes
to Louise's exact specifications. But he's eyeing this whole scene skeptically.
He's never paid attention to a cow, never tasted chocolate
until Louisa brought her bars for everyone to try. And
Andre's impression is that he's going to need a lot
(16:37):
of convincing. I didn't feel he he was, you know,
troup confident that this thing would work, no plick put
or to be a hide. A little female fish that
was like, I don't know, you know this thing, we
will mess with my you know fish going to good
(17:02):
catches the river. This is what they're up against. It's
one thing to continue a how tradition that has lasted
for centuries. It's another to build one from scratch. Nobody
here has any romantic attachment to chocolate. They just have
one very practical question, how is this going to improve
my life? In a few hours, the pods are all
(17:22):
broken and the boxes are full and starting to ferment
in the steamy Amazon air. Each day Louisa Andre have
to come back and turn the mass, scooping it into
a new box and mixing the hot center and the
cougar edges to the fermentation. Evens out. Three of the
people at the workshop turn out to be from s
OS Amazonia, the nonprofit that first alerted Louisa to the
existence of this shiar wakako. They're here to learn the
(17:45):
techniques and teach them to other communities even deeper in
the back country, and so as just trying to open
two more origins up prefer But they don't they don't
know the Cacao Chainou the protocols, so they came to
um learn with us. All of the collegues coming up
(18:06):
is going to come for me. So that's not maybe
the Queen of Amazon. Oh yeah, that's the main goal,
I guess. The s O s Amazonia guys are young,
born in the Amazon and familiar with its ways, and
Louisa says she couldn't do this without them, and so
as really helps a lot of people here. Yeah, everywhere
(18:30):
they go they're like welcomed. So it's really good to
be with them because then whenever we're arrive in somewhere
like new place, they're like, oh, they're with us, and
that's really important here in a region where activists are
often killed. A few months after our visit in this
(18:51):
same region, a British journalist and the indigenous rites activists
he's working with will be murdered by a legal fisherman.
Anything goes in the Amazon, and the life expectancy isn't
high for anyone who challenges the illegal loggers, miners, ranchers
and fishermen. But somehow ss Amazonia is making it work.
(19:12):
The hope is that with their help, what Louise is
doing here will start a wild cocow movement that can
spread clear across the Amazon. We break for lunch, then
head to the boat for our afternoon mission, looking for
new recruits to produce enough chocolate to make the Jerwabar
a real thing. Louisa needs more help, so we're going
to visit each homestead on the river and hope she
(19:33):
can work her magic. Our craft is a long, skinny
boat with rows of benches like little pews. It feels
like a theme park ride or the kind of thing
missionaries would have used back in the day, And suddenly
occurs to me that Louise and Andre are basically Coco
missionaries bringing the gospel of chocolate to the Amazon. At
(19:54):
each stop along the river, faces peer out of the
windows at our mysterious entourage. But each time we doc
people choose to listen were never turned away. Everyone collects
on the cabin floor and sprawls out as Louisa makes
her pitch. Yeah that was great. Actually, like this family
has like a lot of people, so they have a
(20:14):
lot of potential to get more pods. Yeah, I look
like they're a bunch of kids there, and yeah, it
has a nice vibe to it. It's amazing. Pretty much
everyone is on board fourth family and that was nice.
They so far they are the winning family. They got
(20:34):
three hundred pods in one day and they said that
if they had more time they would have caught more.
So that's a win. And they're pretty excited about cacao.
As we head back to day's that evening, I can
feel the hole Jiwa dream becoming real. The pickers are
all in, but now we need the fermentors, someone to
(20:58):
run the station where everyone will drop off their beans
and get paid. It's a much bigger commitment. And while
they agreed to build the drawing shed and even put
us up for a few days, so far he's still
a firm. Now you're turning the box in layers, so
(21:44):
we don't really like dig a hole in the box.
We try to do it in layers because by doing
it in this way we can make sure that we
are cooking all the layers. Even for the next few days.
(22:05):
Louisa keeps teaching using the special protocol she developed for
the middle of Nowhere in more developed places. Pickow fermentation
relies on a lot of gadgets, thermometers to measure heat,
refractometers to see the level of sugar in the juice.
But in the jungle, things break and batteries die. If
a battery dies, you are four hours away by boot
(22:25):
from the next city. Are you going to go and
go there just to get the battery? Oh? The fermentation,
please stop because I don't have a battery here. You know,
like it's it doesn't work like that. So um, we're like, okay,
let's just go buy the field smell tasting visual and
(22:50):
the field the warmth. She developed her own low tech
Amazonian protocol. I was like, well, the temperature of your
body is X. If you get in get in there
and the temperature feels higher, it's because the temperature is
(23:10):
higher than thirty seven celsius. Because your your body tempature
is thirty seven. If the temperature feels lower, it's because
the metabolism of the whole mass is going down. And
then smelling, oh look this alcohol smells really volatile. And
then vinegar you almost want to cry when you when
(23:34):
you like smell a lot of vinegar. So we slowly
we had a protocol where they don't needed any gadgets
to make a good being. Honestly, it's a total game
changer for places like this Instead of fermentation being totally
(23:55):
intimidating for people who aren't used to high tech gadgetry,
the process becomes intuitive, it even fun. One person who's
totally uninterested is z Andering. Louisa had him hanged as
the guy to run this momentation center, but he often
wanders away during the workshop. But as it turns out,
we don't have to look far for a solution. Mic
(24:16):
On his son is asking lots of good questions. Mica
And is twenty, a handsome kid with an earring and
stylish haircut. He blended seamlessly on streets of any city,
and you can tell he's got his eye on the
larger world. But he also loves life on the river.
So after the workshop we asked him what he thinks
(24:40):
people sash dasha ki. Yeah, it's so good, not too
not too much work. No, no, I'm going to defease you.
It's difficult because it's new, but the movement. As as
(25:02):
time passes, he will He is sure that he can
handle this process. How many boxes do you think you
can handle? People said, Fuzzy wash five. That would be
(25:23):
about KOs of dried cacao, enough for a few thousand bars.
A good start. Later, when we're alone, Andre tells me
where my CON's interest in Cacao comes from. He said
that maybe there's a lot of over fishing. Every year
there's a migration of the fish upstream up river, and
(25:45):
he said that nowadays they have like a thousand boats
waiting for the fish. Yeah, Michael ZiLs, but not not
that many fish. And so he was really really hopeful
that Kao could will become eventually something that would be
bigger than fishing here, and it was. The problem is
(26:09):
actually pretty devastating. Fish stocks throughout the Amazon are collapsing
in the face of overfishing and climate change. The Amazon
is the greatest abundance and diversity of freshwater fish in
the world and that has always been the foundation of
rivers diet and income. And when it goes they often
go with him and the loggers and ranchers move in.
(26:30):
So I can see why my con is so laser focused.
And he said they were gonna work hot for that
to happen bec become a major source of income in here,
which was the very first time that I heard someone
from from from here so enthusiastic, and so I think
(26:51):
all are responsive about it. Is even bigger. He was really,
you know, counting on us. If the community can band
together with Louisa to preserve this wild cacao, it might
(27:13):
just help them hang on. But for that to even
be a possibility, the team has to make it to
the finish line on this workshop, and Louisa, she's starting
to flag for good reason. It's been seven years since
we come to different communities in the Amazon, but it
(27:33):
has never been so tough for me. Um I'm pregnant today,
is actually twelve weeks pregnant, and first timemester is just
I don't know, morning sickness, and to be here in
(27:55):
this time of my pregnancy has been tough. I'm not
gonna lie, And of course I can't say what it's
like to be fighting back morning sickness while you're getting
mauled by pium and you're trying to stay positive about
your cow works job. But I'm just going to go
out on the limb and guess that it's not ideal
(28:17):
and that to pull it off, you gotta believe. I
can't help but think back to Louise's Aiahuasca awakening, her
understanding that the forest and the people are one and
her commitment to total partnership with the Amazon, and yet
right now the Amazon is being a bit of an asshole.
The rains are pounding, which drops the temperature, and that
(28:39):
slows down the fermentation, which means the beans might not
be done by tomorrow morning. But we have to leave
tomorrow because there's no other flight out of Cruzaro for days.
But if Louise has to leave before she can show
everyone the final steps, that could endanger the whole experiment.
And more urgently, the river and the swamp behind the
shack are rising so fast that it's not clear we'll
(29:01):
have any ground to stand on by tomorrow. Still, as
we huddle in our cabin staring out at the rain,
Andre says he's glad we can't we make this big
bat that's raising our prices. Who would be engaged? More people?
And did Uh? I was really surprised that they could
build up fermenting am fermenting place, a place, a ferment total.
(29:28):
Uh moved the boxes so so fast it's like a month.
So I think Michael understood that here's an opportunity. I'm
not to get up. Let that gonna go through much fingers.
Let's works, Let's have a go. But that night the
(29:48):
Amazon has a go at us. It's a deluge all
night long. The river tears away chunks of the bank.
The swamp is now a lake lapping at the edge
of our cabin. It's somebody pulls a six ft anaconda
out of it, but nobody even cares. Sometime after midnight,
I hear the explosion of one of the huge trees
(30:08):
in the compound, carrying leaps in its breeks. So one queasy,
eternal second I wait to be crushed. Then the world
explodes with the sound of the tree crashing down nearby,
no direct hit. In the morning, an Amazonian giant stretches
(30:29):
dead across the compound. It was a narrow sky and
it's water water everywhere. The river is now as the
rivers requaimed all the land like, there's just water everywhere. Um,
there's very dry land for little walk on. We're supposed
to head back to turo Desul that um, but that
(30:55):
means a very long trip against the blow up river,
and were is just gonna be full of massive trees
tearing down stream um and doing so fast. I'm not
sure the boat's gonna be able to do it. Louisa
is concerned too. I'm so worried because we're growing on
(31:16):
the river today. That's what I was talking about all night. Um,
that river is just gonna be scammering and we have
to go up river. I hope the rain stops today
because if it doesn't, we are not flying tomorrow. Honestly,
it feels grim. But then this guy is suddenly part
(31:40):
for brief window and we take advantage. We scramble over
the soggy ground the drying racks so Louisa can demonstrate
the last step in the process, scooching through the spread
out beans with your feet to push them into long
rows for better drying off. In the Nac just scooched
through the beans with her feet, gucci along the way
(32:00):
to make channels and ridges things. But as she rushes
through the process, mike On has some final questions. Later,
Louisa gives me the lowdown. He thought it was quite
easy and doable, which is always great. Um. He also
(32:25):
asked how many days I thought it would take? Okay,
how many days? I said between ten and twelve days.
They want to take a picture. No, that sound you
here is not a swarm of bees. It's a drone.
(32:48):
Louise's team brought it along and it's time for the
group photo, and then we scramble for the boat and
push up river against the current. Well I think we
got out, just like the last chopper out. Yeah, Oh
(33:12):
my god, your feet, you look like you've got Hannah tattoos.
New tattoo who is washing her feet in the river
as we are hanging off in the boat. This is, uh,
what's over? A new moment in extreme pick O. The
(33:35):
storms return and we huddle under the boats, torn to heart,
but our pilot is faced first into the down war
for hours, dodging the trees that comes flailing down the current,
any of them could capsuize us. But half a day
later we straggle into trizero dosool like drowned rats. And
the day after that we're back in sound Paolo and
(33:56):
Louisa just has to cross her fingers. She's gone a
even beyond, and so has Matt And now it's in
the hands of the reburying news. They know what to do.
We just have to hope that their relationship with Louisa
is now deep enough and that the river cooperates. I
(34:24):
want to taste of some of this god level chocolate.
We got you covered. Kaleidoscope has joined forces with Louise
Abram and Stetler Chocolate to make a special box to
go along with this very podcast. Now you could sample
flavors from the banks of the Amazon without having to
fight off jaguars and anaconda's. Just visit www dot Stetler
Dash Chocolate dot com to order your wild Chocolate today
(34:46):
check the link in the show notes. A few months later,
get a zoom call from Louisa. Hello, Hey, Luisa, can
you hear your voice? How are you? I'm good? How
(35:08):
how's it going? After so much waiting, this was the
moment of truth and Louisa was calling me with the
verdict straight from her factory floor. I just got into
I never had so many beans in my factory, which
is very, very exciting. This just was an eighteen. We
(35:28):
had to klos this year. We got one point one ton,
so you double this is double that? Yeah, yeah, I
just opened too of the stacks and right off the bat,
(35:50):
I know that dish is my Jubi. They smell great.
I am beyond happy and hoping that everyone loved it. Honestly,
I was too Somewhere along the way I got invested.
I would have been heartbroken to see this cacao and
(36:12):
those Riverino's give way to cattle ranches. And if you
think we were happy, well there I am sitting in
my office, the same place where I got the email,
and Heather marketing coordinator walks in puts it on my
desk and I look up and she's got tears in
her eyes. Matt Caputo was over the moon. His crazy
(36:34):
seven thousand dollar bet had just paid off. I asked
Matt to walk me through the moment when there's your
wah bars first arrived. I was like, this is it,
and she's like, I'm just nodding her head. And so
I opened it up and I'm so nervous that I
pop it in my mouth and then the flavors open
up and everything that I love about Judua in the
(36:57):
past is there. I just know than ten seconds, this
is the best chocolate Louisa has ever made. This bar
doesn't taste like anything else anywhere in the world. You
know we did something where we we helped to preserve
this cacao, and I know the other like minded people
(37:21):
like me are going to appreciate this and to join
us in this fight, and the beautiful thing in this
fight is, you know, our weapons that we use, or
sharing stories and tastes of things that we love and
kind of spreading that love, chocolate and love. What could
(37:43):
possibly go better together? Right? I forgot chocolate and revenge.
So we agreed to catch catch the guys in Flagrante Forest.
How's that gonna happen? Yeah, he said he would need help,
(38:08):
and then we do an operation and we get the people. Yes,
just when you thought it was safe to go back
in Bolivia, it's the return of Vulcar next week on Obsessions.
Wild Chocolate. Wild Chocolate is a Kaleidoscope production with I
(38:33):
Heart Podcasts, hosted and reported by me Rowan Jacobson and
produced by Shane McKeith at Nice Marmot Media. Edited by
Kate Osbourne and my Guest how to Kudor, Sound design
and mixing by Sound Boring. Original music composition by Spencer Stevenson.
A k a Botany production helped from Baheni Shorty from
My Heart. Our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor.
(38:56):
Special thanks to Laura Mayor, Gustas Linos Oswalash and Aaron Kaffman,
Will Pearson, codel Burn, Bob Pittman, Daria Daniel, and the
team at Stetler who are helping us make a very
special chocolate of our own. That's right, We're working with
Louisa at others to protect the rainforest and make delicious
Amazonian chocolate. Visit www dot Stetler dash Chocolate dot com
(39:19):
to taste it for yourself. That's www dot Stetler dash
Chocolate dot com. And if you want to hear more
of this type of content. Nothing is more important to
the creators here at Kaleidoscope than subscribers, ratings, and reviews.
Please spread the up wherever you listen.
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