An afternoon of cacao at Finca El Salto

I went to Finca El Salto, in Santa Fe, to taste a friend's cacao wine and to see how he works: from the pod to the nib, and from the nib to chocolate.

The first thing you see on arriving is not the cacao, it is the equipment. A cast-iron mill under a tarpaulin, the maker's name still raised on it: it grinds the dried cacao. Mills like it also grind coffee, and there are special ones for maize and other cereals. A wooden press. A stone base with its tray on top.

At 14:16 we went in among the trees to look for a pod. Cacao does not bear on the branches: it flowers and fruits against the trunk, on the old wood, and you have to look at the tree a different way to find it.

14:18. We opened it right there, in the leaf litter, with a machete.

14:22. On the table the whole journey ended up in a single image: in one half the white pulp wrapping each seed, and beside it the bean already worked, dark. The same fruit in two tenses, separated by weeks of fermentation and drying.

We tasted it like that, just opened. The pulp is sweet and sharp at once, and it is nothing like what you expect from chocolate.

14:23. The drink, in painted clay cups.

15:31. And at the end the metate: a curved stone with its grinding stone on top, on the forest floor. Before there were iron mills, cacao was ground there.

He told us his story. That part is not in the photographs.

The next morning we went up to the apiary, still in the dark. That is told in another entry.