Scharffen Berger? Been there, done that. Dagoba? So last year. If you want be in on the very latest in artisan chocolates, look to the microproducers who are using technology to bring their chocolate to a new level—one that is much closer to European chocolate than Godiva.
According to a piece in the Los Angeles Times, the new breed of chocolate makers is not content to control factors like percentage of cacao solids. Instead, artisans like Steve DeVries of DeVries Chocolate in Denver and Wired cofounder Louis Rossetto, whose Tcho chocolate company is in “beta” right now, are involved in the process “from bean to bar.” They obsessively search out just the right equipment, travel the world looking for the best beans, and generally produce only small batches of truly high-quality chocolate.
These ain’t no munchin’ bars though. Chocolate like this makes true chocoholics flip out, and at more than $5 per bar is best eaten as the most famous literary chocoholic—Charlie—does: a tiny nibble each day until it’s all gone.
I’d like to know which ones are considered the most delicious from someone who has taste-tested them!! My current Fave is the Vosges Barcelona Bar which pairs a creamy & intense chocolate with hickory almonds & Fleur de Sel. – JET
I agree the Vosges Barcelona bar is one of the best “flavored” bars out there (anything that contains something other than chocolate and vanilla, although I prefer my chocolate without vanilla). I like it better than any of their other, more exotic, flavor combinations.
But there are really two different categories: plain chocolate and the chocolate in combination with other things. I’ve noticed in these discussions people tend to mix the two categories together.
I’ve tried some of the really small-batch, artisinal bean-to-bar chocolate, and I think some of them go too far in their rustic, handmade quality. My favorite is The Grenada Chocolate Company, which I guess you could call “field to bar” chocolate: the co-op that produces it grows the beans and processes them to the finished bar. It’s also the most politically correct chocolate in the world: organic, cooperatively owned, solar powered factory, and all the “value added” in turning the raw materials into the finished product stays in Grenada. But mostly, it’s damn fine chocolate.