Bill Buford on extreme cacao in the New Yorker

If you are a chocolate fanatic like me, then this is a must read article in the New Yorker. Abstract is here, it is not available online apparently.

Schilling was still trying to make each of his chocolate bars by hand in 2001, and how his family got involved in the business. In 2002, the company made its first million in sales; by the end of 2003, sales had tripled.

Then Schilling had a “visitation” from Xochiquetzal, a Mesoamerican goddess of cacao, in a waking dream; he broke up with Holderman, saying he “couldn’t be unfaithful.”

Last year, on October 19th, Schilling had another vision that he would try to buy the land of the ruined tropics and replant it with cacao. That night, he sold his company to Hershey’s for $17 million. He spent the next month defending himself from charges made by organic colleagues that he was a “sellout.”