ChocoMuseo

This guide to ChocoMuseo in Lima follows a two-hour beginner's chocolate workshop back to its real starting point: cooperative farms near Machu Picchu growing a native cacao prized by chocolatiers as more fragrant than the hybrid grown for export. You'll hear about the pickers, fermenters and sorters whose choices shape the chocolate long before a tourist touches a bean, and about roasting, husking and grinding beans on a stone melangeur that has worked the same way for generations. It lingers on the tricky business of tempering the paste, where a wrong step can undo everything that came before.