Where does chocolate come from?

Chocolate begins with cacao beans, the seeds inside pods that grow on cacao trees in hot, rainy regions near the equator. Farmers open the pods, ferment and dry the beans, and chocolate makers roast, grind, smooth, and cool them into bars, often adding sugar, cocoa butter, or milk.

One wonderfully odd detail is that the pods can pop straight out from the trunk, heavy as small balls and packed with pale pulp around the seeds. Before chocolate tastes familiar, tiny microbes help change those sharp beans into the deep flavors people know from a square melting on the tongue.