Pa Pa Paa (Divine Fair Trade Chocolate)

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	Divine Fair Trade Chocolate
Date:	10/05/04 (200 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Yummy, Fair Trade, Hardly any price premium.

Disadvantages: Bar slightly too chunky.

Are you a dark chocolate or a milk chocolate person? I'm a dark chocolate person. I am, dare I say it, also rather a chocolate snob. I don't like any old rubbish. I like my chocolate very dark and bitter, bitter-sweet. And preferably, I like my chocolate with an equally dark, equally bitter, bitter-sweet cup of coffee. Yum! Enter a bar of Darkly Divine, from the Day Chocolate Company, one of the market leaders in Fair Trade choccie. Could it replace my usual Lindt Excellence in taste and quality? Better still, could it replace my favourites Dolfin and Montezuma? Would I be able to indulge my chocolate vice and at the same time move on my quest to be the ultimate ethical shopper by another notch? Buying ethically is important to me, but then so is chocolate important to me. Isn't it to everyone? This particular taste test was an important one?

Darkly Divine comes in 100g bars. That's the same size as a bar of Lindt Excellence, and half the size of a big bar of Bournville. It's nicely packaged, in a black wrapper very similar to the Lindt outer label. That is to say, you don't get a mere wrap of paper with an inner foil casing poking out of the ends. It's a small point, but bars of Cadbury and Galaxy irritate me with this penny-pinching in their packaging ? I hate it when the foil gets caught by something else in your shopping bag and your chocolate's been rubbed all over your bottle of detergent. Eww. No danger of that with Darkly Divine. The bar of chocolate is properly encased and protected. There's no cardboard backing as there is with Lindt, though, and I approve of this, because it isn't really needed and is wasteful. Thumbs up to Darkly Divine for the packaging then ? it's of sufficient strength to p
rotect the chocolate, but it's not over-packaged either.

The choccie itself is quite a flat bar. I like this. Any chocolate connoisseur will tell you that the shape of the bar is very important and that it does have an impact on the taste. It does! I don't like chunky chocolate, a la Yorkie Bar, because it's too sticky and sickly in my mouth. I like thin, flat squares of chocolate, like Lindt Excellence. Thin squares make for a much for sophisticated eating experience, in my opinion. Here, Darkly Divine gets good Murphy Marks, but not top ones. It's thinner than Bournville, but thicker than Lindt. However, it's thin enough to prove acceptable to me. Just!

Darkly Divine has a minimum 70% cocoa content. If you're into dark chocolate, then you'll know that's the mark of a decent quality bar, one that you could eat AND cook with. Personally, I prefer chocolate made with an even greater proportion of cocoa beans ? the Lindt Excellence range has an 85% bar, and Dolfin do one with 90% cocoa content. This makes the chocolate less sweet and more bitter; just how I like it. But Darkly Divine does pass the Murphy Taste Test, even at 70%. A square snaps from the bar with a good, satisfying crack, another mark of good chocolate. And it tastes? well? good! Sweet, but not too sweet, bitter, perhaps not quite bitter enough for me, but it's certainly not sickly; a disaster in a dark chocolate. It's less sweet than the horrid Bournville, but sweeter than the 85% Lindt. The texture's good ? a bar of Darkly Divine at room temperature still feels brittle in the mouth, not half melted and treacly. Straight from the fridge, you'd barely tell the difference between Darkly Divine and Lindt. Yep, yep ? it's pro
bably not quite as darkly divine as either Dolfin or Montezuma's offerings, but Darkly Divine is certainly a super, moreish bar of good dark chocolate. Hurrah!

There was another test to pass, though. I cook with chocolate ? surprisingly enough! ? quite a lot as well as eating it quite a lot. And cheaper, less good quality cocoa beans generally produce a chocolate which doesn't melt well, and can barely be cooked with. I decided to see how Darkly Divine would fare in the kitchen. One warming mug of pot-au-chocolat and one chestnut and chocolate cake later, I was sold. Darkly Divine cooks more than adequately; it cooks sublimely. It melts easily and smoothly, and I couldn't discern any difference in using it from my usual Lindt.

Nutrionally speaking, you can be afraid, very afraid. One bar of Darkly Divine will rack up not far short of 500 calories. Scary, huh? There will also be about 35g of fat for you to account for and about 25g of sugar. Surprisingly enough, Darkly Divine ain't really the thing for your diet. Happily though, the fact that the chocolate is good quality and has that high percentage of cocoa beans means that there is actually less of a sugar content than there would be in a cheaper bar of dark chocolate. Your teeth and your cellulite won't like you for eating Darkly Divine, but you can console them with the fact that it's probably slightly less bad for you than cheap chocolate. Skinny people with lactose intolerances can just roll out the barrels and cheer.

The Day Chocolate Company is pretty cool. They make a range of chocolate bars which have been picked up by most of the big supermarkets. The cocoa beans are produced by a number of independent growers in Ghana who have come together to form a co-operative known as Kuapa Kokoo. It&#
39;s a great set-up ? not only do the growers receive the usual Fair Trade benefits of advance payments, static prices and a social premium, but Kuapa Kokoo is also a big shareholder in the Day Chocolate Company, giving the little people a chance to influence the trading of their cocoa beans and the direction of the company. It's a great story of empowerment. It also means that the bonded labour ? yes, punters: SLAVERY ? which we've read so much about as endemic in West Africa's cocoa production, is not a part of their chocolate. You can buy Darkly Divine with a totally clear conscience. It's probably true to say that the best of the best high-quality cocoa beans do not come from West Africa, but from South America and the Caribbean, and that these areas do not have a problem with slavery. Consequently, it's probably also true to say that if you're already buying high-quality chocolate, it's unlikely you're an unwitting part of a trade which is involved in bonded labour. But still, in my book, it's a good thing to support a company which is trying to improve the trading set-up in such areas. The Day Chocolate Company gets a big thumbs up on the Murphy Ethical Monitor.

Cost? Availability? Will you have to work hard to find it and pay more at the till if you swap to Darkly Divine? Um? no, not really. I've bought Darkly Divine from both my local Tesco and Co-op, although I've not seen it anywhere else, unlike some of the other Day offerings such as Dubble, which are available almost everywhere. I gather Waitrose also stock Darkly Divine, although I couldn't vouch for this. Tesco's current price of £1.09 compares favourably with Lindt's standard 70% cocoa Excellence bar at 98p a
nd even more favourably with their 85% cocoa bar at £1.19. Dolfin and Montezuma come in at a couple of quid a piece for any of their comparable offerings. If you're not as enamoured of posh choc as I am though, and are satisfied with Bournville, you'll find that you're paying pretty much twice the price. For me, Darkly Divine is a good buy. It's perhaps not as self-indulgent as the really posh chocs on the market, but it's certainly as good as Lindt Excellence, which is pretty good. And it's less than ten percent more expensive than Lindt, which ? for a treat and an ethically clear conscience ? is more than pretty good in my book. I shall, henceforth, eschew my three bars of Lindt per week and replace them with Darkly Divine. I can't promise to abandon my forays into the very expensive chocolate market from time to time though. A girl's gotta have one vice y'know!

Pa pa paa means the best of the best, by the way.

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