The Origins of Chocolate -

Revisiting the history of chocolate, Martin Christy of seventypercent.com explains why looking to the past will help you understand the future.

Although we don't know nearly as much about Southern American pre-Columbian civilisation as we'd like, one thing is clear from the melting of Old and New World cultures that took shape in the two centuries following the conquest - drinks made from the sacred and highly prized cacao bean became as popular in the Old World as they were revered in the New. The natives of the New World certainly knew their cacao. The writings of their Spanish conquerors show the Aztecs were very aware of the varying qualities of cacao beans produced from different regions as different times - and not surprisingly as they also used the beans as their currency. In fact the cacao they made their drinks with - now knows as Criollo - came from a very narrow genetic pool, having been refined over 1000's of years through the knowledgeable selections of varieties based on taste to produce heavenly, flavourful cacao, low in tannins.

At first the conquerors were unsure about the strange, thick brown drinks so revered by their new subjects and to make things worse, the natives often coloured their 'cacahuatl' (cacao water) with the dye achiote, staining their lips red as if they had been drinking blood. There were also hints of ungodly vice associated with cacao - after all the Emperor Montezuma was said to drink 50 cups a day, reputedly as an aphrodisiac. But, soon as the colonists began to adopt cacao with a passion, sweetening it with European sugar and only keeping a few of the many flavourings once used by the Aztecs, vanilla being one.

Eventually cacao made its way back to old Spain and then onto Italy, Germany, France and finally England in the early 18th century. At first the drink was the reserve of the aristocracy, but once it caught on, demand outstripped supply. Combined with the effects of disease and mistreatment on the native population, New Spain was forced to become an importer of cacao from new plantations in Venezuela, planted with native wild varieties and worked by African slaves. This was the first time that the original cacao varieties known to the Aztecs and Maya were blended with lesser strains, but certainly not the last.

All but lost

As Spanish explorers probed deeper along the Amazon, they recognised the strange hanging fruits growing on trees on the river banks were in fact from the same species as the cultivated cacao trees of New Spain far to the north. The beans from these wild trees, or others on mountain slopes left over from long passed human habitations were not known to the local population as cacao. Rather than harvesting the seeds and taking through the long process of fermentation and drying that produces usable cacao mass, the pods were instead eaten as fruit - by humans and monkeys alike. These new, wild varieties - later known through the catch-all term 'forastero' had a much wilder genetic base than the Aztec criollo types - no years of careful selection by man here! When production in the north began to decline, Jesuit priests started projects in Brazil to cultivate these new varieties and found they yielded more fruit and were hardier against disease, but also were unfortunately bitterer and lacked the finer flavours found in the original criollo.

Not all the new types were of poor quality though, many were distantly related to the Aztec varieties, or had qualities of their own, and when these were crossed with the original criollo types, many fine cacaos were created (these hybrids are rather loosely known as 'trinitarios' after some crosses planted in Trinidad). However, as profit became more important than quality, the varieties with the greatest yield and disease resistance tended to become the most popular.

Soon cacao became a valuable commodity for fortune seekers in the new European colonies and cacao trees were planted in territories around the equator, often from a very small stock of plants passed from colony to colony. Some of these were from very good original criollo; others were hybrids with a higher proportion of criollo. Later on this would prove to be fortunate for our modern origin chocolate.

Around the turn of the 20th century the early industrial chocolate makers discovered how to make the smooth, melt in the mouth, solid chocolate we enjoy today, allowing chocolate to be a product for the masses. As demand sky rocketed, agronomists and food scientists collected and promoted high yield forastero varieties like Amelonado, which have been extensively planted around the world. Forastero varieties now dominate world cocoa production. Eighty percent or more of the chocolate we eat is made from forastero, often grown in less than savoury conditions in West Africa, with flavours the Aztec and Maya probably never knew. Only around three percent of the world's chocolate is made from criollo beans, and some say there is no pure criollo left at all. Like much else of the native cultures of America, we lost the true flavour of chocolate, and until recently, it seemed impossible to regain.

Extracts from 'The Origins of Cocoa', published By - Speciality Food Magazine. Extracts by Martin Christy, Editor of Seventypercent.com