Green and Blacks Chocolate is among the best chocolate in the world.

First of all, it's organic. Now I don't go overboard on such things, but I tend to think that reduced pesticide residues is a good thing, but it's not generally enough for me to buy a product. I mean, Pesticides are usually not very good peoplicides. But it means the ingredients are better; for example they use raw cane sugar which is going to be slightly higher in minerals and adds flavour.

Secondly, it's a fairtrade chocolate. This means that the producers get more money- cocoa bean producers are often poor, so that's fine by me. But again, I've never met them, so I don't care so much. Doubtless because of this, it's a little more expensive than normal chocolate, but not incredibly so.

Thirdly, it's just amazing chocolate! It comes in 3 main varieties, (but the varieties are growing and evolving as this chocolate appears to becoming more popular). They are:

  • 55% cocoa with a spicey orange flavour (its supposedly based loosely on the mayan recipe) a.k.a. maya gold
  • 35% cocoa milk chocolate
  • 70% dark chocolate
The orange is really nice, albeit incredibly strong. A few small squares is enough. I used to buy this; it's really nice, but after a while I decided it was really too strong, but I still have the occasional square sometimes.

The milk chocolate is awesome, rich, sweet, milky and incredibly chocolatey; the extra ~10-20% cocoa above normal chocolate really does add a fantastic taste.

The dark chocolate is least remarkable, the flavour is pretty similar to any other 70% strong dark chocolate, rather bitter, but somewhat addictive due to the caffeine and mess of other chemicals in any good chocolate (small traces of cocaine- all good stuff ;-) )

Still, any Green & Black chocolate for my money is an experience; you may or may not like it, (the milk chocolate is by far the most accessible, although the orange comes close) but you'll be glad you tried it.

Green & Black's was officially purchased by Cadbury Schweppes in May 2005, but I have noticed in recent years that the fair trade mark has been dropped from all their bars, except Maya Gold (which has had its cocoa content reduced from to 50). I have had trouble tracking down the truth of the 'relationship' between Caburys and Green & Blacks, but I think the fair trade mark disappeared about the time that Cadburys bought a 5% stake in Green & Blacks.

Since this happened, the range and marketing of Green & Blacks has expanded hugely, including carpet-bombing of the various new flavours onto supermarket shelves. Sadly, this has driven many smaller, fair trade, brands off those shelves. I even had to take a box of Green & Black's off the shelf just so I could reach a fair trade bar that was hidden behind it on a recent trip to my local shop.

Here is the web address to a long article about the people who actually grow the cocoa beans used in Green & Blacks Maya Gold chocolate.

I think because Green & Black's was established as an ethical company selling organic, fairly-traded chocolate, most consumers assume that it is fair trade. It ain't! It's Cadbury's!

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