Dean & Deluca Origin Chocolates
Gourmet supermarket in Dean& Deluca in NYC has begun selling upmarket chocolate bars from a slew of Latin American countries as well as other destinations. About half of these Origin bars focus on Latin American nations. Each are single estate chocolates and have the following percentages of cocoa: Costa Rica 38%, Venezuela 43%, Peru 64%, Ghana 60%, Costa Rica 64%, Papua New Guinea 64%, Madagascar 66% and Ecuador 71%. I  have only tried the Peruvian version. It was quite good, though I don’t think these will match up to smaller artisanal, free trade brands such as Green & Blacks or Dagoba, though ti is nice to see someone putting out cocoa from some lesser known regions.
Writer and photographer Nicholas Gill is the editor/publisher of New World Review. He lives in Lima, Peru and Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CondeNast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler, Afar, and Penthouse. Visit his personal website (nicholas-gill.com) for more information.
1 Comment
To shed a little light on these “private label” chocolates, it’s very easy for any company to have bars contract-manufactured by any of the big league chocolate manufacturers or other food contract manufacturers and have a label slapped on it. Most likely these are manufactured in the US from chocolate that has already been produced with beans from these origins. That is to say, there probably a lot of bars out there that have a different label, but in fact contain the very same chocolate.