Every time I get up in front of a group of people—one of
my own classes, or a talk at a chocolate shop, or a crowd at the festival—and
say anything about artisanal chocolate in the US today, my story always starts
with Mott.
“There was this guy, Mott Green,” I say, “and he was buying these
old machines, and figuring out how to make chocolate with them, all by himself,
before anyone else had even thought of it. Mott was the first.”
And
then my
story goes on, and I talk about how this industry has flourished and how
we
live in an extraordinary moment in the history of chocolate. About how
the growing
numbers of chocolate artisans today are people who dreamed something
wild—to make
chocolate, with their hands, maybe even in a garage or a backyard at
first—who have the courage to bring their creation into the world so we
can really taste
this fruit. Somewhere in all that, whether the maker knew him or not,
Mott
was part of the inspiration. He dreamed it, and did it, and it seemed
like it
made him really happy. Mott was the person who actually up and went to
live on
a tropical island to make chocolate bars. Who among us would dare to
live so well?
I just emailed him the other day. He was looking forward to
coming back for the NW Chocolate Festival in September, but surely not as much
as Brian and I were looking forward to having him here again. We loved Mott,
and getting to spend time with him outside the madness of the festival was one
of the best parts of doing the thing. The moment I remember most fondly from
last fall was stealing into the lecture hall where we were screening the
documentary Nothing Like Chocolate, to sit in the back of the room next to Mott
and watch him watch himself on the big screen. The film shows him making
chocolate, but also just being himself, having a life and friends and loves in
Grenada. Whenever something personal was about to come up, he’d warn me
first—“Ok, this part is really about me . . . I don’t know why people would
want to see this, but Kum-Kum [the filmmaker] said it had to be in there,” and
he’d look shy and embarrassed.
But really the whole thing was about Mott—the chocolate, and
the people who were part of his work in Grenada, and the factory, and the boat
that sailed his chocolate to people like me who ate it, happily, all the time.
All of that was Mott’s own dream come to life. I am grateful to have celebrated
that with him, but right now filled with grief that such a tragic accident took
him out of our world.
Thank you, Mott, for friendship and chocolate.
