Inside the lab taste-testing the world's chocolate
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What challenges do small-scale farmers face in the chocolate industry?
This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, but most times, the little mysteries are the best.
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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shore Wavers, it's Regina Barber, and today we're talking chocolate? Do I have that right?
You sure do, Regina.
Awesome. Okay, this is science reporter Ari Daniel. Hey, Ari.
Hi, Regina.
I love chocolate, dark chocolate specifically.
Me too, but milk.
Oh, I do not like milk chocolate, but I respect you, Ari. And I know from our reporting at Shortwave and prices at the grocery store that there's a shortage of chocolate, like due to many things, the climate crisis being one of them because of where it's grown. I would love any good news about my beloved chocolate.
Well, you've come to the right place.
Thank goodness.
And to find that good news, we are going to start about 100 miles north of Rome. In this hilly village, it's called Perugia, and we're headed to the Chocolate Experience Museum.
Yes, I need to go there so bad.
You should. It's an incredible place. And tucked inside this museum is a lab that is dedicated to processing cacao.
Cacao being what chocolate's made from.
Exactly. And Julia Butak, a lab assistant here, starts by sifting a bag of beans. Yes, you're just removing the little bits that aren't full beans.
So it's really physical work.
Julia is from the Philippines. She was never a huge chocolate fan, actually, but her job here has helped her gain a deeper appreciation for the stuff.
Yeah, I bet. All that work. To see the development of the flavor like nuts, fruits, spice, it satisfies you.
How would you define your relationship with the chocolate you work with?
Oh, it's my baby, I would say. I need to care. I need to look after it.
Julia says that like people, each kind of cacao is special. And I want to tell you about this process because it, in turn, is rather special. For a long time, there wasn't a standard way of comparing the dizzying array of cacao beans that are produced on farms across the tropics.
OK, so you mean like chocolate having different like tastes and different smells, kind of like a wine sommelier would like have this like internationally agreed upon rubric.
Yes, that's true. But then in 2009, this sustainable agriculture nonprofit headquartered in Rome started a program called Cacao of Excellence. And they began working to develop a standard way of preparing and evaluating cacao, just like those sommeliers do with wine.
Today on the show, cacao, documenting its splendor, and by doing so, helping a growing number of small-scale farmers. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to ShoreWave, the science podcast from NPR.
Every episode of It's Been a Minute, NPR's What's Happening in Culture podcast starts by asking three questions. Who? How? Why now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow It's Been a Minute wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll break down the zeitgeisty topics that are filling your feed.
Follow us to make sure you never miss a new episode. New ones drop every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. All right, Ari, earlier we got a hint of the chocolate making process, but that chemistry is some of the most delicious science I know of. So I want to give you a chance to walk us through the rest of it.
Okay, so to continue the process, Julia takes 50 of the beans, Regina, and slices them in half nearly simultaneously with something that looks a lot like a guillotine. That's satisfying. A chocolatey fragrance wafts into the air, and it's mixed with notes of citrus. Julia records her impressions on a spreadsheet. Next, she roasts a bunch of the remaining beans for a specific amount of time. Before separating out the shells and then running the nibs through a mill.
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