I’m sort of a chocolate nerd these days. But with a lot of the old favorites selling out to big ol’ corporations (ie. Green & Black’s bars being crapified after being purchased by Kraft), truly good chocolate bars made by well-intentioned companies. Here are two of my favorites:
Raaka Chocolate
Raaka is a NY-based company that sells handmade, virgin, bean-to-bar chocolate. “Virgin” chocolate hasn’t been roasted, meaning the company uses “a low temperature process to bring you delicious flavor that’s closer to the bean.” The phrase “bean-to-bar” means that they start with the actual cocoa bean, making them one of the only companies that offers organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance-certified bean-to-bar chocolate. The flavors are just amazing. Right now they offer a 70% dark cacao bar with sea salt, blueberry lavender, hazelnut, and (my favorite) vanilla rooibos. They’re hard to find outside of New York, but definitely worth hunting down.
Taza Chocolate
Taza offers Direct Trade, stone ground, bean-to-bar chocolate. I can honestly say that the stone ground part of the process gives this chocolate a flavor I’ve never tasted anywhere else. It’s an intense chocolate flavor, to be sure, but there are hints of a natural fruitiness that come through, despite there being no fruit involved anywhere in the process. In addition, you can find out very specific information about how the batch of chocolate that your bar was a part of was produced (see here for an example).
Raaka and Taza are both really amazing companies and I hope they continue to set new standards for how small chocolate companies do business.
Posted in Food and Beverage