Cacao as a
commodity
The bean is also a volatile traded asset. Here’s the market that sets its price — and why almost none of it reaches the farmer.
The market and the shock
Cocoa trades as a soft commodity on ICE in New York and London (10 metric tons per contract). For 47 years the record high was $5,104/tonne, set in 1977 — then the 2023–24 supply crisis blew past it.
Cocoa peaked near $12,931/tonne in December 2024, roughly five times its pre-2023 norm. Through 2025 it traded volatile and elevated (~$7,600–$11,900), then fell below $5,000 late in the year; it bottomed near $2,846 in early 2026 and has since rebounded to roughly $5,000/tonne — still well above the ~$2,000–2,500 pre-2023 range, but ~60% below the peak. The market pivoted from deep deficit (2023–24) to surplus (2024/25–2025/26).
What drives the price? Click each:
What’s in the price of a bar
Given those swings, how much does the cocoa itself actually cost in a bar? Move the sliders — including the price up to the 2024 peak:
This explains the market and bar economics; it is not investment advice. Cocoa is a small, thin, extremely volatile market — the kind where a retail participant is usually the least-informed party in the room.
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- Roughly what was cocoa’s Dec 2024 record high?
- Where does cocoa trade, and in what contract size?
- Name two supply-side drivers of the spike.
- Are raw beans a large or small share of a bar’s price?
- Why did the price spike mostly bypass farmers?
Consolidation
& final
One bar, read completely — from the microbes that made its flavour to the market that priced its beans. Then a final test.
The whole arc, in one bite
Pick up a single bar and you can now read its entire history. Fermentation (Session 6) built its flavour precursors; genetics (5) and origin (7–8) set its raw character; the maker’s roast and conch (9) shaped it; you read its structure on the instrument (2–4); you can spot its faults (12), pair it (13), judge how it was made (14), trace who grew it and whether they were paid fairly (15–17), and place its beans in a global market (19). That is chocolate literacy: not a vocabulary of flavour words, but a chain of causes you can follow backward from the melt.
There’s no universal WSET-style credential for chocolate, but real paths exist: the International Institute of Chocolate & Cacao Tasting (IICCT) runs structured tasting courses; Megan Giller’s Bean-to-Bar Chocolate is a strong reference; and following a handful of transparent makers teaches more than any single book. Keep a tasting log — the instrument works as well on bar #200 as on bar #1.
Comprehensive mock
Drawn from the whole course. 75% (9/12) is a solid pass.
Flashcards
You can read a bar.
Twenty sessions from pod to portfolio. The palate is now yours to keep training — one honest tasting note at a time.
Mark the course complete
Then go taste something, properly.