Divine 70% Dark Chocolate

1.5oz (45g) bar

Ingredients: Fair trade cocoa mass, ft. sugar, ft. cocoa butter, soy lecithin, ft. vanilla

12 sugar/45g serving (26.7% by wt.)

Corporate Info: (Copied from 4/5/11) I've written about Divine before, and while I didn't love the chocolate, the company is pretty amazing. It grew out of a Ghanaian co-op run by and for small-scale family farmers with a mission to buy the farmers' cocoa at fair prices, increase women's involvement, and work toward environmentally sound growing methods. The co-op eventually decided to produce its own chocolate, and in 1997 formed Divine Chocolate with investment capital from an assortment of socially conscious groups including for-profit corporations, nonprofits, and faith-based charities. The beans are grown in Ghana, the chocolate is produced in the UK, and subsidiaries distribute the finished product in North America and Europe. The investing organizations and the farmers' co-op all receive dividends from their shares in Divine—and the farmers' corporate presence means they're also part of decision-making processes. Everyone benefits in a fascinating globalized web of grass-roots organizing, international business, and social responsibility—it can be done! Divine is listed highly in both my sources of socially-focused chocolate producers, though while nearly all ingredients are fair trade, they are not organic.

Appearance: Divine's basic 70% dark chocolate comes in a standard 3.5oz size and in this blocky, solid little bar. Chocolate is orangey-brown and shiny.

Smell: A friendly sweet and sour, like a tangerine, which is to say not acrid or pungent or especially dark.

Taste: Texture is creamy—probably that extra cocoa butter—and after you chew and swallow, there's a little chalky residue. Flavor is nutty and sweet, with a little sour balance so it's not sickly. Not bitter or tannic. Again Divine doesn't blow me away, but this chocolate is just fine and, as I've said many times, it's a great company.

Conclusion: Divine 70% Dark Chocolate is a mild sweet-sour, nothing special but easy to eat.

Divine 70% Dark Chocolate

3.5 oz in 20-something small candies

Ingredients: Fair trade cocoa, ft. sugar, ft. cocoa butter, soy lecithin, ft. vanilla

11g sugar/41g serving (26.8% by wt.)

Corporate Info: I've written about Divine before, and while I didn't love the chocolate, the company is pretty amazing. It grew out of a Ghanaian co-op run by and for small-scale family farmers with a mission to buy the farmers' cocoa at fair prices, increase women's involvement, and work toward environmentally sound growing methods. The co-op eventually decided to produce its own chocolate, and in 1997 formed Divine Chocolate with investment capital from an assortment of socially conscious groups including for-profit corporations, nonprofits, and faith-based charities. The beans are grown in Ghana, the chocolate is produced in the UK, and subsidiaries distribute the finished product in North America and Europe. The investing organizations and the farmers' co-op all receive dividends from their shares in Divine—and the farmers' corporate presence means they're also part of decision-making processes. Everyone benefits in a fascinating globalized web of grass-roots organizing, international business, and social responsibility—it can be done! Divine is listed highly in both my sources of socially-focused chocolate producers, though while nearly all ingredients are fair trade, they are not organic.

Appearance: Dark, with a dull finish.

Smell: Dried fruit, like cranberries or golden raisins.

Taste: Very raisiny, just a little bitter, turning into something still concentrated and succulent but lighter, maybe like dates. Lingering dried fruit aftertaste. Texture is initially hard then melts into dense and creamy.

Conclusion: Divine 70% Dark Chocolate is good for those who like chocolate with a deep dried fruit vibe and/or want to support a really outstanding chocolate company.

Divine Fruit and Nut Dark Chocolate

3.5oz (100g) bar

Ingredients: Fair trade cocoa mass, ft. sugar, currants, ft. cocoa butter, chopped almonds, butterfat, soy lecthin, ft. vanilla

14g sugar/50g serving (28% by wt.)

When I reviewed Divine's mint bar I thought it just okay, but I appreciated the company's commitment to fair trade practices and swore to give its chocolate another chance. That chance is here with the fruit and nut dark chocolate bar, which is more precisely the currant and almond bar in 68% cacao chocolate. The bar is straightforward: It has a standard gloss, is nicely molded, and looks medium brown, and it smells, as you might imagine, of raisins. It also tastes a bit of raisins, and nuts too (though I wouldn't say they're clearly almonds), both chopped fine. The chocolate is sweet and not especially interesting.

I've actually had Divine's fruit and nut bar several times before. It's never my favorite, as the chocolate isn't the best and the combination of currants, almonds, and chocolate is wholly uninspired. But by the same token, the chocolate isn't off-putting and the flavorings don't clash with the chocolate, so the bar is pleasant enough and easy to eat. I wouldn't say I recommend it, but if you like the combination, you could do worse.

Conclusion: Divine's Fruit and Nut bar is acceptable for those who like currants and almonds in their chocolate.

Divine Mint Dark Chocolate

3.5oz (100g) bar

Ingredients: fair trade cocoa mass, ft. sugar, ft. cocoa butter, peppermint crisp 5% (sugar, peppermint oil), soy lecithin, peppermint oil, ft. vanilla.

15g sugar/50g serving (30% by wt.)

As I increase the number of reviews on this blog, I find myself needing more ways to describe chocolate. It's not that all chocolate tastes the same, it's quite the opposite: I've eaten bars that I would describe using the same basic terms but that taste rather different, though it took a few reviews before I'd encountered enough similarities and differences to know that. I'm going to begin the in-depth review process by experimenting, sharing not only what I'm experiencing with a bar but also how it differs from other bars and other flavors.

With Divine's mint bar, let's start before I've taken my first bite. The bar looks smooth and glossy but not shiny. Its color is medium brown, like the shell of a nut, touched with white and yellow rather than the almost black purple-brown of super-dark chocolate. It smells sugary-minty, reminiscent of candy cane, not fresh mint or mint tea or Oreos.

Now to taste. An unexpected surprise! The mint isn't merely flavoring the chocolate, it's also distributed in a dense scattering of tiny mint-flavored sugar crystals. They provide a crunchy counterpoint to the chocolate that is a lot of fun, though I'm not sure the “candy” element is what I usually want out of my chocolate. (Unlike everyone else, I apparently no longer think of chocolate as candy.)

The chocolate itself is also subtly minty, as well as mild, a bit earthy, and not especially complex, a flavor and texture that I immediately associated with Endangered Species' mint bar. In my review I called that bar “chalky,” though that's not really accurate, it just seems less rich and chocolatey than, say, the Newman's Own Organics bar that is similarly mild and sweet but less insipid. Comparing the Divine bar to the Newman's Own one, they have similar levels of fat (about 44% by wt.), soy lecithin as an emulsifier, and vanilla for flavoring, and though this one has a bit more sugar, presumably the mint-sugar crystals account for that. I guess the difference must be something in the cacao processing.

On the plus side, Divine is unusually progressive for a chocolate company. While its chocolate is not organic it is fair trade certified, and the company is jointly owned by several non-governmental organizations and the cooperative of Ghanaian farmers who supply the cocoa beans. The chocolate isn't particularly expensive either—in the range of Endangered Species and Green & Black's—so Divine seems to have a workable model of large-scale, non-luxury chocolate production that treats farmers with respect. It's a great goal, so I'd really like to give the chocolate at least one more shot.

Conclusion: Divine Mint Dark Chocolate's mint crystals make it more interesting than the everyday mint bar, and the company is admirable, but the chocolate is too one-dimensional for my taste.