Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, Samoa, and Cacao

An interesting connection between the author of Treasure Island and chocolate!

Here at Open Book Chocolates, we — Geri & Irene — are long-time fans of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, his life, and works. Stevenson, best known for his novel Treasure Island and novella the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, was born in Edinburgh in 1850.

Although sickly as a child and as an adult, he traveled extensively and wrote about his travels. Stevenson explored Europe, journeyed across the United States (from New York City to San Francisco by train), and ended up in Hawaii and around the Pacific, before finally arriving in Samoa. Additionally, he was a prolific letter writer, penning approximately 2,800 letters during his short 44-year lifetime. 

Recently, we read a New York Times book review written by Brooke Allen of Camille Peri’s brand-new biography, A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson. And, in reading this review, we discovered something very exciting about Stevenson and his wife that we didn’t know before:

“After further travels through Europe and America the couple departed for the South Seas: Nuku Hiva, Fakarava, Tahiti, Hawaii, Micronesia, the Gilbert Islands and finally Samoa, where they bought 300 acres and created a cacao farm; Fanny’s extensive plantings would later become the nucleus of Samoa’s premier botanical garden, which can still be visited today. The Stevensons, passionate anti-imperialists, shed their Western ways and adopted local customs, becoming closely involved in regional politics, while Louis produced journalism and fiction at an almost frantic pace.”

Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny created and cared for a cacao farm while living in Samoa!

In his letters, Stevenson writes about working his cacao farm:

“In spite of the loss of three days, as I have to tell, and a lot of weeding and cacao planting, I have finished since the mail left four chapters, forty-eight pages of my Samoa history… We are all on the cacao planting.

—From November 25th, 1891

“However, I am off work this month, and occupy myself instead in weeding my cacao, paper-chases, and the like.. but I have just returned with my arms all stung from three hours’ work in the cacao.

—From August 7th, 1894

When we originally created our Treasure Island (Rum and Coconut in Dark Chocolate) bar, although we had read Stevenson’s works and knew about his years abroad, we had no idea he himself actually farmed cacao. What a wonderful coincidence! It seems like our Treasure Island chocolate bar was just meant to be!

Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson (1887) by John Singer Sargent.

Cacao Shortage and Price Increases!

Hello there! This is Geri, the owner of Open Book Chocolates. I wanted to take a moment to talk about recent global cacao shortages and price increases. There’s a lot of important information in this blog post, so I hope you’ll take the time to read this.

According to a Reuters article, “Exclusive: African cocoa plants run out of beans as global chocolate crisis deepens,” published this past March:

“Major African cocoa plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana have stopped or cut processing because they cannot afford to buy beans, four trading sources said, meaning chocolate prices around the world are likely to soar.

Chocolate-makers have already increased prices to consumers, after three years of poor cocoa harvests, with a fourth expected, in the two countries that produce nearly 60% of the world's cocoa.

Cocoa prices have more than doubled over the last year, scaling numerous all-time highs.”

According to an Inc. article, “A Cocoa Price Crunch Forces a Scramble to Keep Chocolate Affordable,” published this past June:

“Other food companies are looking at different ways to offset the commodity price spike, including reducing the chocolate content of some products and replacing the cocoa-based confection with other sweet ingredients. Experts in a CNBC report cited the launch of Hershey's new Jumbo Reese's Cup as an example, giving buyers a bigger burst of peanut butter flavor to compensate for comparatively lower chocolate content.”

Here at Open Book Chocolates, we are not changing our recipes or replacing our cocoa with other ingredients. Our craft chocolate uses premium ingredients and, therefore, our prices are higher than Hershey’s and other household-name brands. With the global cacao shortage, we have no choice but to increase our prices so we can stay in business and continue to create special and unique, premium, handmade, bean-to-bar craft chocolate for our customers.

According to Krissee D'Aguiar, co-owner of River-Sea Chocolates (who we collaborate with to make all our chocolate bars), cacao butter has tripled in price and is very hard to come by. This is a huge challenge, because cacao butter is an important ingredient in dark, milk, and white chocolate. Of these three varieties, white chocolate uses the most cacao butter, so we are currently unable to make more Sherlock Holmes (Earl Grey Tea & Honey in White Chocolate) bars. Furthermore, we have a limited number of Sherlock Holmes bars currently in stock. For the above reasons, we have increased our Sherlock Holmes bars to $15.00 each.

Other than Sherlock Holmes, we are keeping all our chocolate bars at $11.00 each until October 2024. This September, we will be launching a Kickstarter campaign for our two newest flavors (to be announced soon). During this time, our online store (openbookchocolates.com/shop) will be closed, though you can obtain our chocolate bars via Kickstarter. If you pledge to our KS campaign, your backer rewards (i. e. chocolate bars) will remain at $11.00 each (except for Sherlock Holmes). Once the campaign concludes, we will reopen our online store. When the online store reopens, all our chocolate bars will have increased to $12.00 each (with Sherlock Holmes remaining at $15.00 each).

Open Book Chocolates is a very small business. We are dedicated to offering our customers the very best chocolate we can. Every year, we continue to grow, and that’s all thanks to our loyal and enthusiastic customers.

Please let us know if you have any questions. Feel free to email us any time at openbookchocolates@email.com or use our contact form (openbookchocolates.com/contact).

Thank you for your understanding! We truly appreciate your continued support!

All the best,

Geri

Open Book Chocolates