Terroir of Chocolate–Cacao Flavor from Around the World (Free Online Lecture) on December 19 at 7 pm is sponsored by the US Botanic Garden. Register at www.USBG.gov/Programs Chocolate can taste completely different when the cacao is grown in different places. You can even taste the difference between chocolate grown in different valleys of one Hawaiian island! Dr. Bletter will take you through the 12-step, 2-month journey of turning colorful cacao fruits into luscious chocolate bars. You will learn how the process was discovered in Latin America and how the steps affect the final flavor of the chocolate we all love to devour. We’ll also look back at the amazing ancient plant chemists of the Inca, Olmec, Maya, and Aztec who invented these processes and still to this day make incredible perfumed chocolate foams that rival modern molecular gastronomy techniques.
Presenter: Dr. Nat Bletter, ethnobotanist, founder and flavormeister for Madre Chocolate. Dr. Nat Bletter has 25 years of experience in botany, traveling the world documenting exotic fruits and vegetables, gathering food in the wild, and exploring herbal and traditional medicine. With his Ph.D. in Ethnobotany from the City University of New York and New York Botanical Garden and postdoc at University of Hawai’i Manoa, Nat is the founder of artisanal chocolate company Madre Chocolate and runs the edible landscaping company Natty by Nature.
