Image courtesy of Luisa Abram Chocolate
Think of Luisa Abram as the Queen of wild chocolate. It’s a moniker she earned by chance not by design, but it’s one that suits her well. She didn't intentionally focus on wild cacao when she began her chocolate-making journey.
Image courtesy of Luisa Abram Chocolate
A native of São Paulo, Brazil, Luisa was in medical school when she decided to change directions and follow her passion for food and cooking. While attending culinary school she interned at restaurants, where the long hours and stress made her feel like she’d given up one grinding profession for another. She was trying to find her place in the culinary world when her father gave her a copy of Chef Francisco Migoya's The Elements of Dessert*. She tried the first recipe in the book, ”Making Your Own Chocolate”, and she was hooked.
At the start of her chocolate journey Luisa met two people who made an impact on her approach to chocolate making. One was Lyndel Meinhardt, a Research Leader and Plant Pathologist with the USDA-ARS. The other was Mark Christian, Founder of C-Spot.
Luisa said, "I remember sitting across from Lyndel with an overly fermented Purus bar, knowing that it was over-fermented because Mark had told me. Lyndel came to me with 70% bars from 5 different origins — I remember Hawaii, Madagascar, Ecuador, and a couple of others — and it was the first time in my life that I tasted bars like we are tasting right now. They were 70% bars, almost the same recipe but with different flavor profiles. And I was like, whoa, so this means if I go to other rivers the flavor profile is gonna change? And Lyndel was like, 'Yes', and I'm like I wanna conquer all of the rivers!" What makes Luisa’s chocolate particularly special is that she only uses wild cacao.
Luisa sources wild cacao from communities deep in the Amazon jungles that she visits often, providing training in post-harvest processing to improve fermentation and drying in rainy, wet environments. Training has been critical to improving what was initially bad-tasting cacao. Luisa found that the women in these communities are important partners in maintaining quality — they follow directions well and pay attention to detail. As a result, women play an important role in the post-harvest processing, ensuring the quality of the cacao Luisa purchases. In turn, her company provides income-generating opportunities for women whose work was traditionally in the home. It represents an additional income stream for families living a subsistence existence, adding to the income they make from fishing and harvesting other rainforest crops.
As her business grows, so does the volume of cacao required to meet her needs. Since she works exclusively with wild cacao, the only way to increase production is to enlist more communities in the Amazon to harvest wild cacao. The beauty of her approach to sourcing wild cacao is that it has the added side benefit of preserving land in Brazil’s rainforests where the cacao grows.
I recommend reading the book Wild Chocolate: Across the Americas in Search of Cacao’s Soul* by Rowan Jacobsen, who delves deeper into Luisa’s origin story and provides an account of his travels with her deep into the Brazilian Amazon in search of wild cacao. He transports readers to the jungle, painting a vivid picture of Amazon life and what it takes to deliver flavorful cacao in a challenging environment. It’s a must-read for craft chocolate lovers and features other Club speakers, including Dan O’Doherty, a fermentation expert who advises cacao farmers around the world on improving fermentation and post-harvest practices.
Luisa said, "Dan came to Brazil and went with me to the Amazon many times in order to perfect the fermentation and drying processes, in both Purus and also Juruá. He's geeky, and he really wanted to go to the upper Amazon, which is more untouched than the rest of the Amazon — Purus and Juruá are Upper Amazon. It was the first time he ever worked with wild cacao, so he was very into it. Dan is still a teacher for me. Every time that we are together, I learn something new with him. He is very knowledgeable."
If You Go to Other Rivers, the Flavor Changes
We previously featured Luisa’s Wild Juruá chocolate last December when Rich Tango-Lowy joined us to talk about Heirloom Cacao Preservation. During our conversation with Luisa, members tasted the remainder of her origin chocolates, all made with wild cacao.
One of the challenges of working with wild cacao is the uncontrolled, wet environment in the rainforest where the cacao is fermented and dried — it’s difficult to produce cacao with any kind of consistency. Some harvests taste great while others have funky notes that weren’t present in the last batch. No matter how much skill these communities have developed, however, they’re still dealing with the unpredictability of the rainforest. The variability in the flavor is part of this wild chocolate’s story. I recommend celebrating it.
The chocolates are named after the rivers where the wild cacao is harvested. These chocolates offer some distinct and complex aromas that add to the tasting experience — I recommend putting your nose inside the foil wrappers after you open the packages and breathing deeply. Read the story of each community that’s located on the inside right flap of each box to fully understand the impact of Luisa’s work.
Acará River 81%
This river is located in Amazonas state in northwestern Brazil and empties into two other rivers before joining the Amazon. The rich aroma is herbaceous, peppery and chocolaty. The flavor journey is distinctly chocolaty with a gamey note and an intense finish that reminds me of chocolate brownie batter. It’s kind of like licking the beaters when you’ve finished baking.
Purus River 70%
The Purus River is an Amazon tributary that runs along the border of Peru and Brazil. Luisa told us, "This bar was the first bar that I ever made. I went all the way to Acre to get these beans. You can smell olives. I associate flavors with colors,and for me, this bar has a deep purple, and then it comes in yellowish, like an oak, and then you get an acidity like berries. Very complex, some jackfruit, dried banana. In your nostrils, when you breathe out, it's very complex, very distinct, and you can feel the texture. It has a lot of butter. This bean has a lot of butter on it."
Tocantins River 70%
The name of this river means “Toucan’s Beak” in the local language. This is the community where Luisa began her journey into wild cacao. While the community was already harvesting cacao, they needed to significantly improve the post-harvest processing to make it taste good. The aroma has a distinctly peppery note and is much milder than the other chocolates. The flavor is nutty and reminds me of, dare I say it, Brazil nuts. While leading us in a tasting, Luisa said, "Tocantins is in the lower Amazon. So we traveled to the upper Amazon, and now I'm taking you down the Amazon, close to the Atlantic, and we are gonna taste Amelonado. It has a little bit of influences of other things, Scavina and other genetic materials, but most of this material is Amelonado. And Amelonado is the bean that is most planted in the world. They took Amelonado plants to Africa and to the islands."
Tocantins River 70% with Jambu Flower
A flower native to the Amazon, Jambu is described as having a tingling, numbing effect similar to Szechuan pepper. My first impression was of floral and tropical fruit notes that didn’t remind me of Szechuan pepper at all. Then the finish arrived, bringing a citrusy, numbing and tingling effect that I recognized. Luisa validated that I'm not the only one who has this reaction, "If you crack the bar you're gonna see a little bit of the earth. When you search through the earth in your backyard, and you pull some dirt, and you see that there are these little things sticking out of it, this is the Jambu flower. Jambu has this numbing feeling, but I always say that this bar is a delayed bar, because you're gonna taste the herbs, the green notes first, and then when you swallow, you're like, this girl is crazy, there's nothing tingling on my tongue. Then wait 20 seconds and you're gonna see that I'm not messing with you."
Rowan Jacobsen's book changed how Luisa thinks about herself. She said, "Prior to Rowan's book, I would never say I'm the only person doing this. But now I say it proudly -- I am the only badass woman crazy enough to go to the jungle and to have a machete in my hands and to go look for my cacao."
* This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
