Organicfair – Organic Fare Trade Chocolate
By amy • • Oct 31st, 2009 • Category: Impulse Buy, Snacks, Sweets|
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Organicfair – Certified Organic Fair Trade Chocolate Heart of Gold – 75% Cacao Dark Chocolate with Cranberry, Blueberry, Matcha, Cinnamon & Ginger. Corazon – 70% Cacao Dark Chocolate with Vanilla bean, Cacao nibs, Honey & Rose essence. Cape Town – 70% Cacao Dark Chocolate with Clementine, Sundried fig, & Rooibos tea. Silk Road – 70% Cacao Dark Chocolate with Peppermint & Mandarin. 72g each, $4.99 Every Hallowe’en, Shelf Life rises up, rattles our chains, and stalks the land in search of grown-up chocolate. Let the kids have the Oh Henrys and the drugstore specials; we want the sophisticated variety – the deep, dark, bittersweet, smashing essence of cocoa. And we’ll go to great lengths to get it – this time we went to B.C. This made-on-Vancouver-Island line of chocolate bars features an assortment of 15 styles, each with minimum %70 cacao and each using an imaginative mélange of spicy, citrus, fruit and nut flavours ( the Chiapas, for example, incorporates cinnamon, cardamom, and chipotle chili; the Talamanca has pineapple, coconut, banana, and lime). Our tasting panel selected a handful of bars, and found, inevitably, that while a few judges were spooked by some of the flavour combos, others behaved like chocolate monsters and devoured them all. The Corazon bar was the least successful of the bunch; the rose, vanilla, and honey elements, while tasting authentic, added up to a kind of soapiness, like Thrillz gum. Definitely an aquired taste. The Cederberg was more likeable, although we were a bit rattled by the fragments of fig seed that lingered in our teeth long after the choc had gone. The Silk Road scored highest, because both the mint and the chocolate seemed fresh, fine, and assertive (although the mandarin aspect seemed very shy). Conclusion? The trick with these well crafted but offbeat treats is to start with a random selection – and then swap bits with the other kids until the witching hour arrives and the spirit of chocolate reigns o’er all.
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