So recently I was lucky enough to receive some chocolate from Pacari chocolate to review. I tell you what; it’s a tough life running a vegan website at times. The company had written to me asking if I’d like to try some and, not being an idiot, I said yes. I generally really like dark chocolate and was excited to receive my free samples.
All their chocolate is organic and they seem really involved with the growers in Ecuador. They pride themselves on this, and their environmental ethics, so altogether Pacari seems like a pretty socially responsible company, which was music to my ears.
They have a wide range of products including chocolate bars (of course!) drinking cacao and chocolate covered fruits and cacao beans. It all sounds pretty yummy, but of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating. They’ve won lots of awards, including for their raw bars, so my expectations were quite high.
I was sent three different flavours of chocolate: a ten gram bar of 70% cacao raw organic chocolate; a ten gram bar of coffee organic chocolate and finally a full sized fifty gram bar of organic chocolate with Andean Blueberry. Yum! I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
Now, many people don’t like dark chocolate because they feel it’s too bitter. I can understand that, even though I don’t agree. However, when I tasted the 70% cacao bar, expecting at least some bitterness, there was none. It was incredibly smooth in flavour and without wanting to seem corny, was kind of the dark chocolate I’d been waiting for all my life! I would really like some of my friends to try it to see whether it’d convert them to dark chocolate.
I’m also aware that many people aren’t keen on coffee in their chocolate. I’m not sure why, but again, I’d defy them to turn their nose up at the coffee in the second bar I tried. It was unmistakably real coffee, but somehow subtler and more genuine than that you’d get in say, a box of chocolates. The pleasantly grainy texture really rounded it out and I’ll be honest, I was sad when it was gone.
Lastly it was the turn of the Andean Blueberry chocolate. I love blueberries and know they go well with chocolate, so figured this one couldn’t fail. I was right! The smooth chocolate was infused with really lovely sweet, tiny, almost chewy blueberry bits. It’s the kind of chocolate that is a pleasure to savour.
I really love the outlook of Pacari and their packaging is tempting and high quality. They’re not the cheapest on the market, nor would I expect them to be, but I’d say they’re definitely worth trying, if only for a treat. They’re stocked in various independent shops (see list here) or you can purchase from their website here.
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