Dagoba Organic Chocolate

I picked up a pair of Dagoba Organic Chocolate bars the other day at a local store. I'll be perfectly honest with you: it wasn't because I was shopping for an organic treat produced with fair trade practices and sustainability in mind. It was because I wanted to find out if Dagoba's product was really worth the price the store charges for it ($3.29 for a 2-ounce bar.)

I chose two somewhat exotic bars - one based on milk chocolate with a 37% cacao content, and the other based on dark chocolate with a 68% cacao content. All of Dagoba's products use certified organic ingredients and when sugar is needed they use organic evaporated cane juice. Choosing a couple of specialty bars would let me experience their chocolate and their idea of what would taste good in a combination. so it appeared to be win/win.

Indeed, the chocolate is superb. Smooth and effortlessly meltable in the mouth as only a truly fine chocolate can be, full-flavored but not overpowering in the combo bars I tried. Both bars were pleasant surprises.

The first one I tried was "Seeds," a delicious 68% dark chocolate studded with pumpkin, sunflower, and hemp seeds. It was good, and the seeds added a nice textural contrast to the smooth chocolate, but I find the hemp thing to be pretty silly. Dagoba claims there's oodles of omega-3 fatty acids in hemp seed, but if that were the real reason they could have just used flaxseed. I guess flax isn't as sexy or edgy as hemp, though, so it's harder to market to the sexy edgy hempsters who like to pretend that growing a rope fiber plant is somehow exciting and risky because it's just like marijuana!

Anyway: Good flavor, nice contrast in textures, kind of silly concept.

The other was "Chai," a 37% milk chocolate containing bits of crystallized ginger and chai spices. The milk chocolate is nearly perfect, and the chai spices (provided by using ginger oil, cinnamon oil, clove oil, anise oil, cardamom oil, anise oil, and black pepper oil) are well-balanced and delightful. Once again, no disappointment here - in fact, the flavor combination was fairly awesome.

So... Is Dagoba Organic Chocolate worth the premium price? Considering the high quality of the product as well as the company's efforts to carefully source their materials and "play fair" with the small suppliers it buys from, I'd say probably "yes."

Link:

Dagoba's website.