the raw cacao costs one chunk. labor, the inner sleeve, this much.ing, this much. various sundry equipment and miscellaneous, another small chunk. chris, me and eric get a slice out of every bar. that leaves this much, which the retailer takes. chef bleeding heart hippie here has already convinced me to give whatever meager profits we make off our first bar to a local charity. >> what's unusual about these pods? these beans? >> extremely high quality flavor. >> thought not around for a while? >> this was over 120 years ago and making a guy and comeback. for a choclatier, this is a once in a lifetime find. >> about 40% of the beans from these trees have white cacao beans mixed in. the rest are purplish in color. we heard of an ultra rare group of trees further up the mountains that produce pods of 100% all white pure beans and that's something that me and eric are very interested in down the road. but for now, don fortunato's daughter has prepared us a traditional peruvian mountain meal. >> wow. >> oh! >> kuinas. >> it's rice dumplings with boiled chi

. >>> peru is a country that's historically driven men mad, mad for gold, for cacao, for its magicalto its hidden mountain valleys. we love the stuff. we obsess about it, gorge on it and fetishize it. i'm talking about chocolate, once a common treat, it's now becoming as nuanced as fine wine making the pursuit of the raw good stuff all the more difficult. i'm joining that hunt in remotist peru, but not before i've re-immersed myself in the booming lima food scene.

peru is a country that's >>> peru is a country that's historically driven men mad, mad for gold, for cacao

amazingly, inside these vessels the archaeologists find carbonized cacao seeds, squash, chiles and beans the preservation at ceren is remarkable. bit by bit, the team reconstructs the ancient maya diet. in the storeroom, archaeologist andrea gerstle measures the remains of a basket that once held corn. gerstle: corncobs have been found in dry caves where no deterioration takes place, and you get a lot of detail in those instances. but in tropical climates, you wouldn't expect to find any remains at all. the level of preservation here is excellent. and it's because the corn was coated by a layer of superfine ash. that superfine ash was moist and hardened into a shell around the corn. and then the corn rotted away, leaving a hollow space. when we filled that hollow space with dental plaster, we can recover all of the details of the corncob, even though we can't touch the corncob itself, the original corncob. this area is incredibly lush. it's incredibly rich. and the variety of plants and foods -- just wild foods -- that can be collected here today is -- is marvelous ! i imagine 1,400 year