This episode of #PodSaveChocolate features an interview with Volker Lehmann, a German-born and trained tropical agronomist who’s been working in Bolivia for over two decades. Volker is best known in the cocoa and chocolate communities as the person who first introduced the wild cacao of the Bolivian Beni, harvested on his chocolatale, the Hacienda Tranquilidad, into the market in 2006 by convincing Felchlin to take on his beans – a non-trivial task.

Since then, Volker has been a champion of Bolivian cacao grown throughout Bolivia, not just in the area of the Beni department that surrounds the Hacienda Tranquilidad, but also in Alto Beni, where farmed cacao, mainly organic, has been produced since the 1970s. There he owns a harvest center “Flor de Cacao” in the town of Palos Blancos, where Heirloom Cacao Preservation (HCP) #1 was produced in 2013.

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This episode of #PodSaveChocolate features a discussion of the tools, resources, and approaches I use when researching chocolate and cocoa on the #Interwebs. These techniques have been developed and honed over more than thirty years spanning careers in high tech and chocolate.

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This episode of #PodSaveChocolate features a discussion of regenerative agriculture, its goals and methods, through the lens of “Is this the best idea? Is it even a good idea? What might be missing? What can we learn from other approaches, such as agroforestry and ancient practices such as the milpa? What is agropequaria and does it have a role? What is the regenerative movement a response to? What does a regenerative ag cocoa farm look like?”

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This episode of #PodSaveChocolate features an interview with Dustin Cornett, the founder/organizer of the Craft Chocolate Challenge (“CCC”).

Dustin and I will discuss how the CCC differs from other competitions, the role it plays and how it fits into the market, previous winners, rule changes, and additions to this year’s competition. Dustin, who recently moved from Kentucky to Indiana will also announce something new he’s been working on – another welcome addition to the American Craft Chocolate scene debuting later this year.

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This episode of #PodSaveChocolate features an updated version of the presentation I gave to the annual symposium of The British Society of Flavourists on October 2oth, 2023 on Communicating the Flavors of Chocolate and Coffee. The overall theme and topic of the Symposium was coffee. (The 2024 Symposium, to be held in Brussels, will have chocolate and cocoa as its theme.)

When I was asked to put together a presentation, I immediately thought back to my days at RISD where I was introduced to Edward Tufte’s book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. (I was fortunate to be able to take a class taught by Tufte after I graduated.)

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This episode of #PodSaveChocolate features a discussion of news stories that have come to my attention over the past month as well as a regular AMA – Ask Me Anything (about cocoa and chocolate).

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This episode of #PodSaveChocolate features an interview with the award-winning Honduran chocolate Elmer Pineda of Yojoa Chocolate.

I have been to several countries in Central America – Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, but not Honduras, so this is an opportunity for me to learn more about cocoa grown in Honduras and the chocolate made from it.

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In the previous episode, I presented an overview of my recent trip to Nigeria for ICD’s International Cocoa and Chocolate Forum where the theme was “Putting Value in Cocoa.”

For all of recorded history, the primary emphasis on the consumption of cacao – when it was not being used as a form of currency– was on the oxidized beans. When many (most?) people think of adding value to cocoa in producing countries the first thought is derivatives – nibs, liquor, butter, and powder.

This episode will feature an exploration of what it means to “forget what boxes are” when it comes to thinking about ways to add value to cacao with a focus on value addition in producing countries in ways that may also benefit farmers, not just investors. If time permits, the discussion may veer into how this could affect government policy.

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