My journalistic interest in the world’s favorite dessert was first piqued on a gloomy December day in 2009, when a friend and I toured a chocolate factory.
Taza Chocolate in Somerville, Massachusetts, makes stone-ground artisan chocolate. Its flavors are so rich and gritty, with bright, acidic high notes, that a bite-size square or two is enough.
It was the height of the farm-to-table trend, and many chocolate lovers, myself included, were curious to learn more about the bean-to-bar process.
Why We Wrote This
Soaring prices and reports of a cocoa crisis prompted a cross-newsroom look at the current challenges, and enduring traditions, of the global chocolate trade.
The tour was crowded. We learned how beans from cacao trees are fermented under banana leaves before being roasted.We watched an old Italian-made cocoa bean grinder, painted fire-engine red, do its work. And we heard something about the Taza founders that was advertised as unique: They personally knew the farmers who grew their cocoa beans in the Dominican Republic. They had slept on the mud floors of their homes and walked their jungle farms.
A brochure advertising “Chocolate Week” in Belize was on a table by the factory’s entrance. Participants would spend a week at an eco-lodge learning firsthand where chocolate comes from. On a whim, I signed up.
By May, I was bouncing over dirt roads in a school bus on my way to visit Eladio Pop’s cocoa farm in central Belize. I imagined some kind of plantation where the trees grew in neat rows like an apple orchard. Wrong. The only way we knew we were on a farm was a small wooden sign. We had simply walked into the jungle. There were no rows, no fences, no barns. Everything was growing all at once, all over the place, blooming, withering, and crashing to the earth. We chewed on raw cocoa, sucking on the sweet, tangy pulp that protects the bean before biting into the bitter core.
Memories of my trip came to mind early last year when news headlines warned of a pending “cocoa crisis” as chocolate prices skyrocketed. How was Taza weathering this moment, I wondered? Could an international look – from Côte d’Ivoire to Oaxaca, Mexico, and yes, Somerville – provide an interconnected perspective on global chocolate? The moment felt right for a cross-newsroom collaboration. Monitor reporters and photographers set out to find commonalities and current challenges in the chocolate trade. In this issue, readers will see the outcome of this work, which spans continents.
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