Divine Chocolate – Morally superior, epicurially average.

By Elizabeth Bear, on February 8th, 2011

Today, we take on three varieties of Divine chocolate. Divine bills itself as a virtuous chocolate company — organic, fair-trade, and 45% farmer owned. According to Wikipedia, it’s a partnership between the Kuapa Kokoo cocoa growers’ collective of Ghana and the alternative trading organization Twin Trading. To all appearances, this is an ethical company producing a product even the socially conscious can feel good about consuming–and to top it off, the chocolate comes attractively packaged with its own golden ticket, for the Roald Dahl fans.

Unfortunately, the chocolate itself is on the mediocre side.

I tasted three bars–the 70% dark chocolate; the 70% dark chocolate with raspberries; and the fruit and nut dark chocolate.

It’s my impression that all three of these bars use the same base chocolate.

The Divine couverture is not bad, by any means–it’s got an adequate mouthfeel, although I like a creamier bar. But for me, a 70% bar has to make up for brittleness and lack of cocoa fat with intense flavor and nuance, and this, the Divine just has not got. The chocolate, rather, is a bit thin tasting–it’s got some tartness and fruit overtones, but not a lot of depth or bitterness or, well, chocolate flavor.

The chocolate has a nice sheen and a nice snap, but the aroma is light and subtle. I expect dark chocolate to be intoxicating, heady–this was terribly reserved.

I couldn’t detect much difference in flavor between the 70% bar and the fruit and nut bar. I did find one currant (I think) in the fruit and nut bar, and a bunch of minute chips of undifferentiated nut. Whatever was in there, it didn’t have a lot of impact on the finished product.

The raspberry bar had the opposite problem. It tasted strongly sour, and the “freeze-dried raspberry granules” in it added a nice crunch, but there was no trace of true raspberry aroma. Alas, the extremely mild chocolate got very lost under the sourness of the raspberry.

The bar is very pretty, with tiny red dots of raspberry “granule” dotted throughout.

As a whole, I would have to say that Divine Chocolate is unobjectionable, but not craving inducing. In a house of chocoholics, all three bars sat out on the table for days without being demolished.

In desperation, I decided to try cooking with it–to wit, a little split baguette, a little good olive oil, a little smoked salt, a little chocolate–and a brief sojourn under the broiler.

The verdict? Better, but still not brilliant.

I badly wanted this chocolate to be brilliant.

But I’m afraid that the best it rises to is “not bad.”