Wild West Chocolate Cowboy Coffee Bar

Wild West Chocolate: The World Needed an Outlaw

If you’re new to Wild West Chocolate, as I was before trying this bar, know one thing upfront – Wild West leans into their name, hard, and they love every minute of it. Based out of Missoula, Montana, these folks set out on a very clear mission, and one visit to their About Us page declares the core of that mission immediately, in large, all caps letters: THE WORLD DIDN’T NEED ANOTHER ORDINARY CHOCOLATE BAR. IT NEEDED AN OUTLAW.

I’m sure at some point soon we’ll dive much deeper into the Wild West Chocolate story for an Everywhere Chocolate Feature, but for now, we’ll focus on the two areas that you’ll really want to know for this bar.

First, they prefer a return to “simpler times when organic, unprocessed food was the only kind,” and we wholeheartedly agree. Wild West cares about what they put into each bar, and it shows right there on the label.

And second, Wild West comes riding in with the determination needed to deliver a much, much better lower sugar chocolate option than what currently exists today. Let’s take a closer look, and if you’d like to start with my short video on tasting the bar, feel free to click here for a quick scroll down to that instead.

Let Me Welcome Everybody to the Wild, Wild West…

I will readily confess here, I did NOT expect Wild West to embrace their namesake as wholeheartedly as they have. Before tasting a bar from a chocolate maker brand new to me, I prefer to know little beyond just the ingredients… to let the adventure being essentially at that first bite and then move forward from there.

That played out quite well with the Cowboy Coffee Bar, because the bar isn’t simply a shot in the dark attempt at a coffee bar people may quickly embrace for the love of coffee… it’s an homage to a different time. It’s inspired by cowboy coffee, as in coffee cowboys drank on the regular, especially on long trips, moving herds. Coffee was revered as very American, a stark contrast to tea, with its oppressive connotations still firmly held in place.

The flavor, the energy boost for the long work shifts or the long road ahead… cowboy coffee referred to a specific method of preparing coffee, where the proper brewing equipment we all swear by today didn’t exist, at least not out on the trail.

Here’s a quick look at how cowboy coffee was prepared, per Waka Coffee –

“Cowboys made their coffee in a pot over open fire or on a bed of hot coals. They usually made it in large pots (3-5 gallons) of tinned iron that was blackened by smoke. This size pot was the standard for a working group of ten to twelve men.

They poured ground roasted coffee beans in the pot, mixed with water, and waited until the liquid started overflowing outside the pot. Once it was piping hot, coffee was distributed among the fellows.”

Wild West Chocolate Cowboy Coffee Bar

One taste of this bar and you will quickly understand just how seriously Wild West takes their chocolate recipes. You’ll hear me mention that coffee rules this bar, with the cinnamon and vanilla notes barely, subtly present, and that’s no accident. The Wild West Chocolate Cowboy Coffee Bar is for people who really love both coffee and chocolate. If you’re not in both camps, then this likely isn’t your bar.

If coffee is life to you, however, then this bar may very well find its way into your regular rotation. Yes, coffee dominates the bar, but it’s a also a smooth, powerful, and steady flavor, one that blends incredibly well with the unique sweetener Wild West uses for its bars. I was very pleasantly surprised at how near perfect the sweetener combination worked with their chocolate.

Indeed, it’s worth a closer look…

A Unique Blend of Sweeteners

Four ingredients make up this very special sweetener blend from Wild West. They are Deadwood serious when they say that simple ingredients, ones that you can readily pronounce, are the ones you’ll see on their labels. Their lower sugar sweetener is no different —

“Every bar, every Bear Claw, every single bite is sweetened exclusively with real organic fruit — our own blend of sun-ripened dates, mulberries, peaches, and mangos. That’s the whole story. No shortcuts. No smoke and mirrors.”

As I note in the video, tasting the Cowboy Coffee bar just has me excited to try more, to see how well this sweetener works in other varieties.

The Stats

Here’s a look at the impressive ingredients list in the Cowboy Coffee bar. One note about the warning provided at the end: Wild West crafts only plant-based, vegan chocolate, so that text is only in reference to the strict warning requirements for potential trace allergens. As far as we can tell, all Wild West Chocolate products are certified vegan, gluten-free, and are USDA Organic and Non-GMO Project Verified (which, although redundant in this case, is still very much appreciated).

Ingredients: Organic Dark Chocolate (Organic Fruit Blend [Powdered Date+, Powdered Mulberry+, Powdered Peach+, Powdered Mango+], Organic Cocoa Liquor++, Organic Cocoa Butter++, Vanilla Extract+), Organic Coffee++, Cinnamon+.

+Organic Ingredients
++69% Fair Trade Ingredients, Fair Trade Certified™ by Fair Trade USA™

Warnings: Manufactured on equipment that processes tree nuts, peanuts, milk, wheat, and soy.