Vandana ShivaBonbons

Description

Deep flavor from mild ancho chilies, Maui vanilla beans, and Mexican cinnamon, plus magnificent texture from stoneground chocolate. Named for Vandana Shiva.

Much like Vandana Shiva herself, The Vandana chocolate is a complex firecracker of a candy: bittersweet chocolate with textured bits of Maui vanilla beans, Mexican cinnamon, and freshly ground ancho chilies. It’s very warmly and cozily spicy, not at all overwhelming, with flowery and sweet notes.

This bonbon is made with Taza chocolate, a stoneground, organic better-than-fair-trade (they use a direct-trade system that is superior to traditional fair-trade certification), bean-to-bar, biodynamic, recycled paper-packaged, bike-delivered chocolate (from Chiapas!). Phew! That’s some liberal cred!

European-style chocolate is the result of many steps—chocolate is not a heavily refined food in the sense that it is chemically treated or “modified,” but it takes a whole lot of mechanical potchking around to get it from bean to bar.

Taza skips one of the big steps, conching, and the result is something strange and lovely that doesn’t sound lovely at all—gritty chocolate. As they put it: “We skip [conching] in order to preserve the texture of our chocolate and the natural flavors of the beans…the distinct texture of our chocolate gives it the appeal of more wholesome food. We use Mexican molinos, which are traditional stone mills, to achieve our tasty and ridiculously intense chocolate… Taza chocolate is food, not candy.”

—lagusta

About Vandana Shiva:

Vandana is a contemporary physicist, activist, paradigm shifter, and visionary. She advocates for globalization in the best sense of the word: learning from and respecting the best of every culture. She fights for local, sensible, environmentally sound solutions to complex global problems like climate change and water scarcity. She brings the diverse voices of women, especially working women, to the forefront of every campaign because of her belief that “for me, ecology and feminism have been inseparable.”

“Let us in our diversity create an earth democracy.”