Criollo cultivators are trying to preserve the ultimate chocolate treasure.
This is about as far as you can get from the world's boutique chocolate shops. I'm hiking through dense, rain-forest-like vegetation near Venezuela's central coast, shooing away mosquitoes and unsuccessfully dodging spiky palm trees. And yet, as a full-fledged chocoholic, I don't mind: I'm about to find the world's best cacao. A couple more meters down the trail, I see it. Not an especially tall tree, nothing majestic--just the bearer of the divine criollo bean.
The simple bean of the Venezuelan criollo--source of what many connoisseurs consider chocolate's gold standard--had been on the verge of extinction. But here on the Monterosa...
