Ashlee VanceNYT Best Seller | Reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek

The secret to the world's best chocolate

31 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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0:47

In this brief excerpt from Ashlee Vance’s YouTube video, two speakers describe an unconventional chocolate‑making process taking place in a laboratory in Pasadena. Speaker A narrates the early stage of the process: massive, foul‑smelling, vinegar‑like brown cacao beans that appear to be rotting. After drying and a short oven roast, the beans suddenly emit a rich, brownie‑like aroma. Speaker B frames the outcome as a triumph, claiming that the two men behind the lab have produced what some consider the world’s best chocolate, emphasizing the surprise of such quality emerging from a non‑traditional setting. The dialogue juxtaposes the initially off‑putting sensory experience with the eventual decadence, highlighting both the technical transformation and the narrative of a ‘mad‑scientist’ chocolate maker.

You end up with this, like, massive gym sock vinegar-smelling stinky brown beans that are rotting. Do they tell people it's your chocolate? They say it's like Los Angeles chocolate.
These 2 men have produced what some consider to be the world's best chocolate, and they've done it here in a laboratory in Pasadena, which is not where you're supposed to produce the world's best chocolate. It's pure, unadulterated decadence.
You end up with this, like, massive gym sock vinegar-smelling stinky brown beans that are rotting. Okay. You dry them, and then you put them in the oven, and about 10 minutes in, it starts to smell like the best brownies you've ever smelled.
We're going to learn how the chocolate is made, but first we must get to the mad scientist behind the mad science.