(Images from serrv.org)
I think it typically goes something like this: friends… good, enemies… bad. Sharing… good, hoarding… bad. Chocolate… good, Buttered Popcorn jelly beans… bad. If I’ve learned nothing else in my quarter-century, these things I know. (Except for maybe that sharing thing – I think that might be more of a case-by-case kind of situation.) So armed with these all-important nuggets, I recently dug into a thrillingly sizable box of samples I received, splayed its contents out on my coffee table, and summoned my three roommates, the visiting sister and brother-in-law of one of them, and the sweet-toothed Bengali friend of another, to join me in a chocolate sampling, sponsored by Divine Chocolate.

Founded in the U.K. in 1998, Divine Chocolate is the first ever farmer-owned Fair Trade chocolate company. With their mission of improving the livelihoods of small-holder cocoa farmers in West Africa, Divine Chocolate is co-owned by the farmers of Kuapa Kokoo Farmers’ Cooperative, who receive fair trade prices for all of their cocoa, share in the company’s profits, and benefit from numerous community development projects and initiatives funded by Divine. And all these things I just rattled off? All good things. Which gave me pause, I have to admit, as I unwrapped the first of my (very generous sampling of) chocolate bars. With all these positives stacked up pre-tasting, where, I worried, might the equal and opposite list of negatives reveal itself?

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