Green & Black’s dark brown packaging is a perfect match for the dark brown, slightly purple bar inside. It’s a well glossed and tempered bar, matched by an aroma that’s just as refined. It’s an intense, deep, woody scent with sharp black fruits and raisins piercing effortlessly, but the aroma as a whole seems rather uniform and orderly, with nothing sticking out too dramatically. So far, it looks like clear sailing ahead.

Deep and chocolaty with coconut and clove, this is a great introduction, almost ideal even, but in an instant, the chocolate’s ugly side unleashes bitterness and tannins in torrents. Blackened fruits, however, do rise above these distasteful rogues, adding a sharp stab to an otherwise woody and dark profile that at times maintains a molasses-like quality, with musty and earthy blasts at the end that seem pretty odd.

Texture is smooth but not creamy. It has a fudge-like persona, melting with considerable thickness, resembling peanut butter perhaps, but certainly it seems a bit too thick and soft. One can tell the chocolate has taken to a dark roast, which is evidenced by the bitterness, resulting in a final product that tastes like an Amedei bar gone awry. These aspects could very well be leftover idiosyncrasies of an erstwhile organic market, but it definitely suggests problematic beans. As a whole, though, the chocolate is merely passable despite the bitterness which is somewhat muted but still very noticeable and unpleasant. The bar has some great flavor but also some bad flavor to match.

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One of the "granddaddies" of the organic chocolate movement, and unfortunately a reminder of where organic chocolate started in terms of quality. This is chocolate from the Bad Old Days of organic cocoa production, when quality was uneven at best, attention went to organic methods over taste, and people seemed to think the organic certification was enough to justify a higher price for a substandard product. One might commend G&B for daring to pave the way, but today, there are far better chocolates available.

This bar looks pretty unprepossessing out of the wrapper - somewhat uneven, with a dark, neutral brown shade, reminiscent of charred wood. It's got a definitely "rustic" appearance, and in this case it's a negative, suggesting hasty manufacture over artisanal production. The aroma is also alarming, mostly an earthy and woody cast, but with rubbery background odours, raising the suspicion of careless fermentation. Indeed, earthy/woody aromas without anything else balancing them already seem pretty flat and unexciting.

Flavour is very woody right away, with extremely tannic characteristics. The bitterness is unrelenting and really overwhelms much of anything else. Perhaps the basic chocolate would have been better in a sweeter blend, but at 70% it's just very jarring and off-putting. The melt is reasonably smooth, but remains somewhat dry and pasty, a bit like some peanut butter can turn out to be. Overall there is little to appeal - this is the sort of bar that turns people off bittersweet chocolate from initial exposure.

One can't help but get the feeling that the priority here was on organic certification. Very little, if any, effort seems to have gone in to quality bean selection, fermentation, or roasting. In the early days of the organic movement that was, sadly, the trend, and this resulted in a bias against organic, with the belief that it would either be low-quality, somewhat pathetic product or truly odd stuff with unfamiliar and rather inedible ingredients - alternative for alternative's sake. Today, however, there are much better organic chocolates and Green and Black's really needs to get with the times and start producing quality chocolate if it hopes to compete.

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Slightly tart aroma with strong chocolate, a toasty floral note and vanilla. Rather black looking and quite gritty when broken. Seems to damage quite easily, as if the surface is not that hard. Snaps with a thud rather than a crack, breaks in the mouth almost like fudge.

Strongly flavoured with an initial cherry lightness before bitter flavours of almond and hazelnut emerge. The melt is fairly pleasant with lemon and toffee hints, developing into milky vanilla, but towards the end strong ash and earth hints emerge. By that point you know you are eating organic chocolate, with unfortunately often seems to be more worthy than it is smooth.

Length is dry and strongly bitter - but doesn't turn and shows no signs of poor quality, leaving a slight fizzy sensation in the mouth.

This is an important bar in the development of organic chocolate - Green & Black's, claim it to be the first in the world - however times have moved on and more recently developed bars have shown that it is possible to produce organic chocolate as good as any non-organic. A worthy, fairly traded offering, and widely available - but there are better alternatives, including Green & Black's own 72% cooking.

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