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The Amazon rainforest, origin of the cacao bean, is giving life to a nascent craft chocolate movement in Brazil.
Global traders have long bought cacao beans grown in the forest at relatively low prices and sold them to big chocolate brands abroad. Now, the new Brazilian chocolatiers are catering to their country’s growing upscale urban market, making chocolate in Brazil, sometimes blending in other Amazonian fruits and nuts.
The aromatic vanilla-like seed of the cumaru tree, for instance.
A buttery, floral fruit called bacuri.
Brazil nuts.
Açai berries.
And cacao’s lighter, tangier Amazonian cousin — the cupuaçu.
These are chocolates made with what Guilherme Leal, one of the country’s best-known businessmen and the founder of Dengo Chocolates, calls “the flavor of Brazil.”
“High-quality chocolate, desirable chocolate — I hope you enjoy — but with a proper identity,” Mr. Leal said in an interview in Belém, on the sidelines of the international climate conference known as COP30.
The new chocolate makers range from tiny local operations inside the Amazon to big companies like Dengo, with its chain of boutiques across Brazil.
