Jane Merryman

Rosenblum, Mort. Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light. North Point Press, 2005.

            Phenylethylamine, a molecule produced in the human hypothalamus, triggers the same warm glow one feels when a lover enters the room. This substance is also found in Theobroma cacao, a tropical bean from which we make chocolate. No wonder chocolate expert and critic Chloë Doutre-Roussel advises, “You just have to give yourself permission to enjoy it.”

            My friends think I’m a chocolate snob. The French would call me a choco-dépendante, a chocoholic with class, according to Mort Rosenblum, author of Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light. But I am practically indifferent compared to chocolatiers, those producers of upscale delectables who have created their own mythical cachet.

            Rosenblum crisscrossed the hemispheres from South American jungles to Paris’s rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré to a modest industrial street not far from the eastern end of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to investigate the chocolate mystique. He talked with people who grow cacao on small plantations, others who ferment and dry the beans, and still others who process them into a product that requires as much attention and creativity as wine. Rosenblum visited a dizzying array of exotic locales and dedicated entrepreneurs who consider their craft an almost mystical calling. He discovered that the chocolate-making business is a dangerous one, rife with paranoia over industrial espionage. Secrecy shrouds the exact location of plantations and the details of manufacturing processes. Competition is fierce and backbiting rampant.

            A couple of years ago in the completely different atmosphere of the cool mountains of Indonesia, I walked through a mixed forest that included cacao trees. My guide hacked off a large orange pod and split it open to reveal innards crammed with white beans covered with slime. This disgusting mess bore no resemblance to my recreational drug of choice, that deep, dark, luscious concoction whose very smell fills me with a sense of well-being that few other substances can provide.

            The Spanish conquistadores were spellbound by a mysterious drink they found to be practically a sacrament in the Mexican rain forest, and they returned to Europe with magical beans that immediately became a sensation among the upper classes. Today, after nearly five centuries, chocolate is still much more than an item to slip into a lunch pail or backpack. Attempts to bad-mouth it as an unhealthy treat have been derailed by scientific research that shows, among other things, that chocolate reduces high blood pressure and contains beneficial antioxidants.

            When we move out of the realm of supermarket candy bars, we enter the world of the sophisticated palate where a bite of fine chocolate can awaken in the mouth hints of leather or licorice, raspberries or dried plums, tobacco or herbs.  Professional tasters use such terms as harmonious, complex, balanced, lightly mentholated fresh nose, and long on the tongue.

            Personally, I prefer my chocolate to be 64 to 70 percent cacao, without the soy lecithin that is sometimes used as an emulsifier, and from a single source, most notably New Guinea or the African island of São Tomé. I don’t want it mint- or liqueur-flavored, shaped into bears or bunnies, or sprinkled with gold leaf. I confess I am disappointed with the favorable research. I would like my indulgence to be a bit naughty. 

(This review originally appeared in the Redwood Coast Review.)