As a kid growing up, I had a great love for chocolate. My favorite brands were Hershey’s and Reese’s. How can you not love chocolate? However, when I grew up and traveled the world, I started to appreciate more sophisticated chocolates from different countries and handcrafted chocolates from America. Here are two of my favorite chocolate brands, one from America and one from Iceland.
VESTA
VESTA is an American chocolate that is handcrafted in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, by a married couple, Roger and Julia. They wanted to make small-batch chocolate that was bean-to-bar but is also cost-friendly. They combined those two goals and worked with an artisanal chocolate-making house where French techniques are employed and fine organic cacao beans from various countries are used.
They certainly know what they’re doing. Roger was a former master Chocolate Maker at Cacao Prieta in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and a pastry chef at many upscale New York City restaurants. Julia is a food stylist of Baby One More Bite and has worked with clients such as Wendy’s Starbucks, and Guinness.
The VESTA team makes sure every candy bar, cookie, brownie and granola is first-rate. They do that by ensuring that each batch of beans is hand-sorted and roasted in small batches to get the optional flavor profile. VESTA has a large selection of chocolate products including classic hot chocolate, bonbons, brownies, cookies, chocolate drops, cacao nibs and cacao hazelnut spread. Some of their products are even vegan, such as the spread, granola, nibs and many of their candy bars as such as the Vegan Blue Spirulina, Vegan Golden Latte, Vegan Matcha Oat and vegan non-dairy dark milk 60%.
I tasted several VESTA chocolate bars, and they all had an intense taste; if it were a wine, we’d call it “full-bodied.” We tried the 49% organic single-origin dark milk chocolate from Belize, the 78% organic dark from Guatemala and the 84% organic dark from Belize. The 84% organic dark is from Belize’s “Maya Mountain” and has a high cacao content; the flavor is not subtle but is truly perfect for chocolate lovers.
Our other favorite was another Belize offering, the single-origin bar that was perfect. It wasn’t too sweet but was just right.
The chocolate bars start at $9, and the cost for other delicious offerings range from $3.75 to $80 for a 12-pack cacao sea salt brownie.
Omnom
It never occurred to me that there would be chocolate made in Iceland, but again, I don’t know why there wouldn’t be. Who knew? And, lucky for us, we discover Omnom, a chocolate made in Iceland that is just like the country: pure, fabulous and a little offbeat.
These fantastic chocolates came from the chocolate passion of two friends, Kjartan Gíslasson and Óskar Pórõarson, who wanted to make small-batch, bean-to-bar chocolate using the finest cacao beans. But they also wanted to do it the Icelandic way. Of course, they use the highest quality ingredients, including single-origin cocoa beans from Madagascar, Tanzania and Nicaragua, but they added the Iceland touch. They use natural Icelandic milk powder sourced from more than 700 dairy farms across the country. They also use a 240-year-old process of taking seawater from Westfjords and turning into flaky sea salt.
Of course, the selections are a bit unusual—but all delicious. Our favorite was the milk + cookies where the milk chocolate is topped with spiced (lots of ginger and cinnamon) almond-oat cookies. It was a two-for-one delight. Another unexpected thrill was the dark nibs + raspberry with real dried raspberries!. You could see them! The coca beans were from Madagascar and coupled with the raspberry produced a a real kick! Another surprise was the spiced white + caramel, which was white chocolates spiced with orange, cinnamon and malt topped with crunchy salted caramel. It seems that in Iceland having a carafe filled with a mixture of orange soda and malt (also known as Jólaöl) is a popular winter drink, and this bar is a tribute to this tradition,
As we said, they have a number of slightly offbeat but fantastic offerings such has black ’n' burnt barley, lakikis + sea salt and Big! sea salted almonds. But our favorite is one we couldn’t even pronounce: SUPERCHOCOBERRYBARLEYNIBBLYNUTTYLICIOUS! This bar is a dark chocolate from Tanzania sprinkled with cranberries, salted almonds, puffed barley and cacao. You don’t need to know how to pronounce it—or spell it—just try it and smile. Prices start at $9.