What is Artisan Organic Chocolate?

If you want truly delicious, unique, and healthful chocolates, artisan chocolatiers may be your new favorite chocolate makers. Not a brand, artisan chocolates are produced using a style of chocolate-making that stresses the use of fine ingredients and careful processes.

Most artisan chocolate companies will use the highest quality cacao beans they can find and process them slowly, using age-old production methods. In particular, an artisan chocolate company may use long conching times to reduce the acidity of the beans, minimal sugar, and no artificial flavors.

A high degree of skill is involved in making artisan chocolates, with each producer leaving their own personal touch on the finished product. Whether it's an interesting ingredient or a special technique for fermenting or roasting the cacao beans, artisan chocolatiers take pride in developing one-of-a-kind morsels to be enjoyed by the discerning palate.

The end result? Delicious, luxurious confections that, like fine wines, are to be appreciated for their subtle flavor, texture, and mouth-feel.

5 Organic Artisan Chocolate Companies

Delve deeper into the world of organic artisan chocolates with these delectable producers:

Theo Chocolate: As the only organic, fair trade bean-to-bar chocolate factory in America, Theo prides itself on producing high-quality, creative chocolates that help to change the way the cocoa industry conducts business. Using a small-batch production system, they consider the process of making chocolate an art. Time and high-quality ingredients are used to produce five bars with flavor notes from various parts of the world.

Dagoba Organic Chocolate: Full Circle Sustainability principles guide the production of Dagoba's organic artisan chocolates. Using a combination of modern and time-honored processes, Dagoba produces pure blends, single-origin, and innovative infusions using creative flavors, essential oils, and fresh, locally-produced ingredients.

Lillie Belle Farms Hand Made Chocolates: Entirely hand-made using time-tested European chocolate-making techniques with an American twist, Lillie Belle artisan chocolates are both sustainable and award-winning. Using almost entirely organic ingredients like fresh-picked raspberries, strawberries, and marionberries grown on their own Certified Organic farm, Lillie Belle chocolates aim to make people happy with their creations.

Ithaca Fine Chocolates: The Art Bars made by Ithaca Fine Chocolates are organic and artistic from start to finish. Founded by art historian Erika Fowler-Decatur and her husband Michael Decatur, this company attempts to bring fine art and fine chocolate together. A Swiss chocolatier creates the Art Bars from superior Fair Trade Certified chocolate and ingredients that are Certified Organic by the USDA. And they come wrapped in a collectible art card made from recycled paper. Ten percent of all profits are given to local and global art education organizations.

Vere: With "A fresh take on chocolate" as their slogan, vere strives to produce sophisticated, pure, healthful confections crafted with extraordinarily delicious single-origin, sustainably-grown cocoa. Their artisan creations are made with low sugar and come as truffles, clusters, wafers, and organic bars. They also carry vegan and diabetic-friendly options.

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Chocolate - A History of Chocolate

Did you know chocolate was originated in Central America? That it used to be a treat only to the rich? Chocolate has a fascinating history!

The Olmecs occupied a small area south of Veracruz and were the first cultivators of the cacao pod. The Mayans were next, just south of present day Mexico, to elevate chocolate to status of the Gods. They named the cacao tree Cacahuaquchtl (tree) as they were concerned no other tree was worth naming. They believed the tree belonged to the gods and that the pods growing from the tree were an offering from the gods to man. They Mayans were the originators of a bitter brew made from cacao beans. It was a luxury drink enjoyed by kings and noblemen. Thankfully we can all enjoy chocolate now!

Christopher Columbus, in 1502, reached the island of Guanaja off the coast of Honduras. As legend goes he was greeted by natives that gave him a sackful of cacao beans in exchange for some of his own merchandise. When Cortes arrived seventeen years later the cacao beans were being used as food and a form of currency. It was reported that a slave could be bought for one hundred cacao beans. At the time, two hundred small cacao beans were worth one Spanish real.

The Spanish helped develop cacao plantations in Mexico, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Jamaica and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Cacao production has since spread all over the world but the cacao from these original regions still produce the most highly prized variety of cacao bean. The first ever chocolate processing plant was set up in Spain in 1580. From then on the popularity of chocolate gradually spread to the other European countries.

The Dutch transplanted the tree to their East Indian states in the early seventeenth century and from there it spread to the Philippines, New Guinea, Samoa and Indonesia with a large degree of success made possible by the exploitation of hundreds of thousands of African slaves. In the early nineteenth century the Portuguese transplanted Brazilian cacao saplings to the island of Sao Tome off the African coast and later to West Africa. By the end of the nineteenth century the Germans had settled it in Cameroon and British in Sri Lanka. Plantations have since spread to Southeast Asia and Malaysia is now one of the world's leading producers.

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