# Wild Chocolate: Across the Americas in Search of Cacao's Soul - Hardcover

by **Rowan Jacobsen** (Author)

**"Inspiring." -MARK BITTMAN****  
"One of the best stories under the sun." -JOS****?** **ANDR****?S**

**From James Beard Award-winner Rowan Jacobsen, the thrilling story of the farmers, activists, and chocolate makers fighting all odds to revive ancient cacao and produce the world's finest bar.**

When Rowan Jacobsen first heard of a chocolate bar made entirely from wild Bolivian cacao, he was skeptical. The waxy mass-market chocolate of his childhood had left him indifferent to it, and most experts believed wild cacao had disappeared from the rainforest centuries ago. But one dazzling bite of _Cru Sauvage_ was all it took. Chasing chocolate down the supply chain and back through history, Jacobsen travels the rainforests of the Amazon and Central America to find the chocolate makers, activists, and indigenous leaders who are bucking the system that long ago abandoned wild and heirloom cacao in favor of high-yield, low-flavor varietals preferred by Big Chocolate.

What he found was a cacao renaissance. As his guides pulled the last vestiges of ancient cacao back from the edge of extinction, they'd forged an alternative system in the process-one that is bringing prosperity back to local economies, returning fertility to the land, and protecting it from the rampages of cattle farming. All the while, a new generation of bean-to-bar chocolate makers are racing to get their  
hands on these rare varietals and produce extraordinary chocolate displaying a diversity of flavors no one had thought possible. Full of vivid characters, vibrant landscapes, and surprising history, _Wild Chocolate_ promises to be as rich, complex, and addictive as good chocolate itself.

### Author Biography

**Rowan Jacobsen** is the author of eight books, including the James Beard Award-winning _A Geography of Oysters_ and 2021's _Truffle Hound_. He has written for the _New York Times_, _Harper's_, _Outside_, _Food & Wine_, _Forbes_, _Mother Jones_, _Scientific American_, _Smithsonian_, _Vice_, and others, and he appears regularly in _Best American Science & Nature Writing_ and _Best Food Writing_. He has been an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, a McGraw Center fellow, and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. The creator and host of the 2022 podcast series "Wild Chocolate," he lives in Vermont.

**Number of Pages:** 288

**Dimensions:** 1.1 x 8.2 x 5.8 IN

**Publication Date:** October 08, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 28.99 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 28.99 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Wild Chocolate: Across the Americas in Search of Cacao's Soul - Hardcover

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> Updated: 2026-07-21