— January 2019 Issue Free Content —

With the word chcolate now so inextricably connected to Valentine’s Day, I must say I find it surprising every year that more chocolate makers don’t fully embrace the holiday, and particularly the larger companies that fit into the On the Chocolate Regular mold… ones more prepared, from a production standpoint, for seasonal offerings.

On the other hand, the prospect of putting in all that extra work for something people only purchase during the span of a few weeks each year may, understandably, annoy the hell out of small to mid level chocolate makers.. and we completely understand that as well.

Still, ’tis the season of love, and as such, it’s time for us to send a little love to some of the chocolate makers and chocolatiers who do look to make Valentine’s Day extra special for chocolate lovers. So, without further ado, here’s Chocolate Connoisseur Magazine’s Guide to Valentine’s Day Chocolate in 2019, to help walk you through a full spectrum of Valentine-specific chocolate options.

We kick things off with Lake Champlain Chocolates for one simple reason: they own Valentine’s Day. Search for “valentines chocolate” on Google, scroll past the ads and the junk chocolate (Godiva and See’s in this case), and the first website you’ll find is Lake Champlain’s, which even comes in above proverbial holiday powerhouse Harry & David. Sometimes Google (and Bing as well) gets it wrong, sending us to the wrong place for what we’re looking for. In Lake Champlain’s case, however, the chocolate company earns its Valentine’s honors.

How? By treating Valentine’s Day with much, much reverence. Clicking the Google link will take you right here, to the company’s Valentine’s Day Chocolates page, where, to send a little winter basketball quote your way, they offer not one, not two, not three… but well over a dozen different seasonal chocolate options.

Although Lake Champlain doesn’t quite register as one of the elite chocolate companies on Chocolate Connoisseur’s scale (largely because they don’t disclose their ingredients on their product pages), they still do a lot of things right, which includes offering organic options (see our pick below), crafting their chocolate with “only the highest quality non-GMO, organic, and fair trade certified ingredients (whenever possible), and never adding preservatives, extenders, or additives.” They also place a serious focus on local sourcing (click here to read all about it).

They’re also a certified B Corporation®. What exactly is a B Corp? Feel free to watch the video above, plus, according to Lake Champlain’s website –

“Unlike other certifications that look at individual products, B Corporation evaluates the entire business — assessing the yearly impact on the environment, workers, customers, community, and government. This new type of corporation is purpose-driven to create benefits for all, not just shareholders, working together to be the change we seek in the world.”

So there’s most certainly a lot to love here… and we mean a LOT. The sheer quantity of option Lake Champlain offers is staggering. They must own one heck of a facility to produce chocolate on such a grand scale.

 Lake Champlain’s Salted Caramel Latte Organic Hearts ($13.50)

For now, however, let’s get back to Valentine’s Day, where we’ve chosen LC’s Salted Caramel Latte Organic Hearts as our number one Valentine’s Day pick. Reasonably priced and organic, Lake Champlain describes the Salted Caramel Latte Organic Hearts as follows –

“Coffee, chocolate, and caramel — you can have it all this Valentine’s Day! Thrill someone deserving with our salty-sweet, latte-inspired treat made from 43% “dark-milk” chocolate infused with rich Dominican coffee from Vermont Coffee Company. Cradled inside each chocolate heart is a golden center of salted caramel, just waiting to be discovered. Fair trade, 100% organic certified.”

Click here to view the hearts on Lake Champlain’s website, and don’t forget to check out their full Valentine’s Day arsenal of chocolate love right here as well.

Reasonably-priced shipping options, with an interface that lets you actually select your Delivery Date right off a calendar, makes the entire ordering process a breeze as well (and not a cold, midwestern arctic breeze of -50 degrees that some of you may be experiencing while reading this)!

And if you try Lake Champlain Chocolates for Valentine’s Day 2019, please let us know what you think in the Comments at the bottom of this article so we can share your perspective.

+ Product photo by Lake Champlain Chocolates

Based in London, Love Cocoa created two gorgeous Valentine’s Day bars for 2019, although if you live outside Europe, you’ll need to act quickly to receive your chocolate in time for the holidays. Most other parts of the world require a 10-day shipping window, so you’ll want to order as soon as possible.

For those of you unaware of Love Cocoa (and considering the company’s newness, only established in 2016, we suspect that’s the norm), think Cadbury… yes, Cadbury. I know what you’re saying– “Wait, do you mean the Kraft-owned, big chocolate conglomerate Cadbury?” No, not exactly. I’ll let Love Cocoa explain, per their “Our Story” page online (click here to view the quite interesting, full Cadbury timeline, which we’ve edited down to just the beginning and end for brevity’s sake) –

“The inspiration behind Love Cocoa comes from founder James Cadbury’s, great-great-great grandfather John Cadbury, who setup Cadbury chocolate nearly 200 years ago. The philanthropist built Cadbury on great ethical grounds, looking after its workforce and improving civil rights. With the family no longer involved, the business was subject to a hostile takeover in 2010 being sold to a US company…

2010 – Cadbury becomes part of Mondelēz International after a hostile takeover and controversy. The much loved British firm is now in hands of the American owners who make a number of promise including that to keep open British factories. Within weeks of the takeover going through, Kraft announced it was going to close the Somerdale factory. Four hundred jobs were lost.

2016 – Love Cocoa is launched in July, built on the principle of the ethical company Cadbury originally was.

2017 – Love Cocoa gain first listings at Fortnum & Mason’s, 100 years after they stocked the original Cadbury products.”

The man behind the new Cadbury mission is none other than James Cadbury himself, the thirtysomething year-old descendant of the original, philanthropic Cadbury family, a far cry from the new world company you now see today. Indeed, Love Cocoa presents a rock-solid mission which you can read in its entirety right here. That mission includes a partnership with The Rainforest Foundation, all in an effort to “combat problems of deforestation, cocoa farmer poverty and human rights abuses, rife within the cocoa industry.”

Love Cocoa Valentine’s Day Dark Sea Salt Chocolate Bar (£4)

Although Love Cocoa crafts both chocolate bars and truffles, their Valentine’s Day efforts focus solely on bars, with two unique options for the holiday. Our pick is the Valentine’s Day Dark Sea Salt Chocolate Bar, made with organic fair-trade dark chocolate (cocoa mass, cocoa butter), organic fair-trade cane sugar, organic vanilla extract, and 0.1% sunflower lecithin.

For this bar, Love Cocoa uses cacao from Nacional in Ecuador, and in addition to the stellar ingredient choices, we absolutely love their attitude as well, as evidenced by their take on the sea salt sourced for this bar –

“We believe good sea salt doesn’t need to come all the way from the Himalayas, so we save thousands of unnecessary food miles & get ours from Essex! Maldon Sea Salt, established over 130 years ago, has an unrivalled reputation for taste & quality, and if it’s good enough for top chefs worldwide then it’s good enough for us.

According to legend, it was first manufactured by accident over 2,000 years ago by Roman Commanders when taking a hot seawater bath.”

Love Cocoa Valentine’s Day Salted Caramel Milk Chocolate Bar (£4)

In addition to the Dark Sea Salt bar, Love Cocoa also offers a lighter chocolate bar, its Salted Caramel Milk Chocolate Bar, registering at 37% cacao. You can view the Milk Chocolate bar right here, and click here to view the Dark Sea Salt bar.

+ Product photos by Love Cocoa

Before I expanded my chocolate horizons and entered the world of Chocolate Connoisseur, Vosges served as the pinnacle of all things chocolate in my world. Their unique bar combinations… a darker chocolate than anything I’d experienced before…. Vosges really served as my first foray into a larger chocolate bar world.

Once I started eating bean-to-bar chocolate, however, and met more and more small batch chocolate makers, Vosges no longer felt quite the same. That’s not to say they’re a bad company, however, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just that, in a world where we often feel a much closer, intimate connection with chocolate makers and chocolatiers (particularly via all the In Focus and Chocolate One-on-One articles here at the mag), something feels disconnected with Vosges… perhaps most highlighted by paying a visit to any of their chocolate bar pages, only to find each bar’s cacao origin conspicuously absent.

Still, visit Vosges’ Superior Source Initiative page instead, and you’ll see, quite clearly, just how much company founder, Katrina Markoff, truly cares.

Of course, all those years in the chocolate business also gives Vosges the added edge, similar to Lake Champlain, of great variety in production. Vosges takes the annual holiday seriously, also with well over a dozen Valentine’s offerings, including some rather extravagant items aimed toward a realtively high income demographic, a core part of the Vosges business model.

Vosges Praline and Caramel Cosmic Heart ($35)

While at Vosges you can spend anywhere from $150 to $295 on chocolate “packages” (think champagne or exotic crystal pairings), you can also secure some gorgeous chocolate gifts for much less. We actually loved two options this year– the Praline and Caramel Cosmic Heart, and the Product RED Collection.

The Praline + Caramel Cosmic Heart is an eight-piece collection featuring Vosges’ limited edition bonbons, caramels, and at the center of the heart, their signature domed La Bombe, crafted with hazelnut Reishi mushroom praline, dulce de leche caramel, cocoa nibs, 45% cacao dark milk chocolate, and edible 23-karat gold leaf.

Click here for a full description of what’s in the box.

Vosges Product RED Collection ($32)

Meanwhile, the Product RED Collection presents nine bon bons, in three different varieties, with a deeper cause in mind. If you’re as yet unfamiliar with the Product (RED) initiative, it’s the work of U2’s Bono and Bobby Shriver’s (RED) organization, started now over twelve years ago to help combat AIDS. Visit www.red.org for more.

Showcasing Vosges Cabernet, Champagne, and Bourbon Bonbons, the collection not only looks stunning, but also provides an extra boost to your romantic gift-giving, knowing that this gift of love extends far beyond your Valentine’s Day moment.

Click here for full details on the Product RED Collection, and to view all of Vosges Valentine’s Day options, click here for two more pages of chocolate-loving choices.

+ Product photos by Vosges

When it comes to getting personal, Lulu’s provides a stark contrast to any other chocolate on our 2019 Valentine’s Day list. If you’ve yet to read our In Focus on Lulu’s Chocolate in the November 2018 issue, click here to give it a look. Founder Lulu Bonner helps us tell her wonderful, inspiring story of how she found chocolate (or chocolate found her), and how it all led to perhaps the most apropos chocolate company of all for the Valentine holiday.

Indeed, we invited Lulu to join us in the Chocolate Shop for our Jan-Feb chocolate offer, because of the pure chocolate loving perfection Lulu’s Chocolate provides this time of year. Since we covered Lulu’s story so extensively in the article, we won’t elaborate on that any further here, but we will dive into the Deluxe Love Collection she’s offering to everyone, and of course with discounts to our free CC Club Members (10%), our magazine subscribers (20%), and our Chocolate Connoisseur Premier subscribers (30%).

Lulu’s Chocolate Deluxe Love Collection ($40 – s&h included)

The Deluxe Love Collection includes four chocolate bars – Raw Love, Midnight Velvet, Smoked Sea Salt Almond, and Aztec Crunch, as well as a box of  Love Truffles (three per box), Salted Caramel Cups (two per box), and Maca Buttercups (two per box).

The full collection arrives in a lovely gift box as well, the perfect Valentine’s Day present for your most-loved, loved one.

Click here to view the delectable raw, vegan, organic goodness right here in Chocolate Connoisseur’s Chocolate Shop, available until late February.

Featured in this issue’s On the Chocolate Regular column, Chocolove offers a unique hybrid of widely available Valentine’s options, and a handful of special chocolate collections only available via their website. You can read all about Chocolove in Rene Zimbelman’s article (Chocolate Connoisseur subscribers, click here to read the full article, while non-subscribers may click here for the extensive preview), so here we’ll dive right into our chocolate recommendations.

Chocolove Gold-Dusted Caramel-Filled Dark Chocolates Gift Box ($20)

Our first choice, online only, is Chocolove’s Gold Dusted Caramel Filled Dark Chocolates Gift Box. It may be quite the mouthful to say, but it’s a delicious mouthful of organic caramel, something extra special considering Chocolove seldomly focuses on organic. As Chocolove notes online, this unique Valentine’s Day treat is a –

“12-piece box of decadent dark chocolates filled with liquid caramel and dusted with real gold flakes… 100% of sale proceeds are donated to the Morgan Adams Foundation which funds pediatric cancer research. To learn more: www.morganadamsfoundation.org”

Chocolove Strawberry Dark Chocolate Bar ($2-$3)

As for relatively easy-to-find local offerings, Chocolove put out three holiday-themed wrapping versions of bars they do ordinarily sell, including the brand new Ruby Cacao Bar, which serves as the first ever Ruby bar we’ve found in any store here in the States. The other two bars are the Almond & Sea Salt in Dark Chocolate Bar (Chocolove’s #1 seller) and the Strawberry in Dark Chocolate Bar, which is dark chocolate with strawberry puree filling.

If you’re wondering about the Ruby Cacao Bar, I can honestly say it’s about exactly what I expected, based largely on what Clay Gordon told me many months ago when he first tasted a ruby cacao sample from Callebaut. It’s very similar to white chocolate, but replace white chocolate’s sweetness with a berry-esque fruitiness that doesn’t quite match any real fruit (which makes sense, as there is no real fruit in the chocolate).

Chocolove Ruby Cacao Chocolate Bar ($2-$3)

The end result is, well… kinda weird. It honestly doesn’t taste like chocolate in my opinion, so this bar does nothing for me, which is what I’ll probably expect from all ruby chocolate options until proven otherwise. As we first noted many moons ago, here’s what Callebaut stated in its initial press release –

“Consumer research in very different markets confirms that Ruby chocolate not only satisfies a new consumer need found among millenials – Hedonistic Indulgence – but also high purchase intent at different price points.”

I’m not sure how ruby cacao possibly qualifies as “indulgence” compared to, say, a LetterPress Belize or Ucayali bar, but perhaps I’m the crazy one. Regardless, I don’t ever see ruby appealing much to chocolate connoisseurs, but of course, time will tell…

In the meantime, no shade thrown on Chocolove for trying the new cacao available to them. You just won’t find the Ruby Cacao Bar among our recommendations for Valentine’s Day 2019, other than as a “give it a try” to see what all the fuss is about.

We found all three of the holiday-themed wrapper bars locally (although we saw the Ruby bar only at Natural Grocers), and you can view all of Chocolove’s Valentine’s Day options by clicking here.

For our Chocolove pick, click here to view the Gold Dusted Caramel Filled Dark Chocolates Gift Box.

Two final notes. First, although they do offer three other gift box options in addition to the Gold Dusted Caramels, we recommend steering clear of those, as we found artificial flavor and/or artificial coloring in each one (not something Chocolove normally uses, so it must just be a Valentine chocolate exception).

Second, Chocolove’s shipping charges tend to be a little high ($18 minimum charge is what we found), so if that’s important to you, just a heads up.

+ Product photos by Chocolove

A late, surprise entry into our 2019 Valentine’s Day Chocolate guide, Tony’s Chocolonely once again joins the holiday party with a “Be My Valentine” themed bar follow up to their annual Mulled Wine winter holdiay bar available each December. Indeed, the only reason this bar even made the cut is because a local Natural Grocers put it on display, front-and-center, as soon as you walk in the door; otherwise, we would’ve missed it.

Tony’s Chocolonely Valentine’s Day Chocolate Bar ($4-$6)

Tony’s creates its Valentine’s bar with cherry meringue, so this bar’s subtitle, if you will, is the 51% Dark Chocolate Cherry Meringue Bar. It’s a very, very different flavor profile than the super-sweet, lower cacao percentage, milk chocolate bar they sell in December, and with the cherry meringue, this bar actually tastes differently than any other chocolate I’ve sampled before.

As a very loose baseline for any of you considering this bar for your special someone (and I mean very loose, as we all know how subjective chocolate is), Rene loved the bar, whereas I took a few bites and left the rest for her. As noted above, I absolutely love cherry with chocolate, but this bar’s cherry meringue flavor actually leaned much more to meringue than cherry for me (to the point where I’d call it a Meringue Cherry bar, not vice versa).

Either way, if you enjoy Tony’s Chocolonely, you’ll likely still enjoy this bar regardless, so don’t let any of that sway you. It’s probably available at most stores that sold the Mulled Wine bar in December, but don’t hold us to that.

You can also pick one up online at the place we’re about to delve into more below, Cost Plus World Market. Here’s a link if you’d like to purchase there: Tony’s Chocolonely Valentine’s Day Chocolate Bar

+ Product photo by World Market

Our final two options are simply part of a quest to take care of any last-minute Valentine’s Day shoppers. Specifically, we want to make sure you have easy-to-find local options in as many markets as possible, and one place that does a decent job of presenting some expanded chocolate options is Cost Plus World Market (or World Market for short).

Now don’t walk into World Market and expect to see an impressive array of bean-to-bar chocolate from around the world, because you’ll be sorely disappointed. They do, however, always offer at least a few items that will blow the doors off the box store chocolate garbage you’ll find when trying your average store.