Ratza Chocolate
ICS Chocolate Bar Awards
This is one of two free sample posts of a Chocolate Bar Review (here is the other sample post). They give out free samples at chocolate shows—so why not a few freebies here on The Cacao Muse? These two posts give you a taste of what the award entry reviews look and read like. And if you’d like the keys to the Chocolate Review Kingdom, tap that paid subscription button!
Chocolate maker: Ratza Chocolate
It’s not every day you come across a chocolate maker who’s a Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner focusing on food as medicine, and a practicing Western herbalist to boot. Sara Ratza, the founder of Ratza Chocolate, is one such chocolate maker. Her personal mission is to “introduce people [to] the healing properties of cacao and how we can integrate the use of herbals, spices, and food into our chocolate.”
What I love about Ratza is not just their passion for the healing powers of food but also their dedication to our planet. Their wrappers are made from unbleached recycled paper and the chocolate bars are packaged in compostable bioplastic film. These people walk their cacao walk.
Location: Tarpon Springs, Florida
Awards: Ratza Chocolate participated in the 2021 Chocolate Bar Awards, an annual competition hosted by the International Chocolate Salon. It was honored no fewer than five times:
The Strawberry Tulsi bar received a Bronze Award in the Best Texture category and an Honorable Mention in the Most Unique category.
The Lemongrass Thai Lime bar received Honorable Mentions in the Best Taste and the Best Chocolate Bar categories
Both bars mentioned above also received Honorable Mentions in the Best Flavored Chocolate Bar category
Read on for my independent review1 and tasting notes for the three bars that Ratza Chocolate entered into the 2021 competition.
Hopped Citrus
Cacao Muse review: This bar had me at “Hopped Citrus.” With a name like that… how do you resist? Citrus evokes energy, vitality, a purified spirit and zest for life (pun fully and consciously intended!), and the hops… well let’s just say it gives you that extra kick you need sometimes. Ironic, then, that the hops flower and the orange peel are so understated. I want a little more out of this bar—just as I want more out of life at all times!
Tasting Notes: A smooth, dark, rich flavor bloom that envelops you in its warm embrace. Around the edges, you touch the citrus… or maybe it touches you. But it’s just a tease, a light touch you yearn to be a little more intense... a little more orange zing, a little more of that mysterious hops flower. Your mind’s telling you it should taste at least a little like beer, but of course it couldn’t be further removed. This bar is a fine, delicate balance between the rich dark warmth of the cacao and the light-infused electric flavor of citrus and hops.
Origin: Moho Valley, Belize
Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, organic cacao butter, organic panela (unprocessed evaporated cane juice), sustainably harvested hops flower, organic dehydrated orange peel
Strawberry Tulsi
Cacao Muse review: Just as the Hopped Citrus and the Lemongrass Thai Lime bars, the Strawberry Tulsi is breathlessly understated. The chocolate is warm, rich, and silky smooth, with just a hint of strawberry and tulsi.2 The people at Ratza Chocolate know how to match herbs, spices, and fruits, and how to infuse them into chocolate. I apologize profusely for so desperately never having enough of these fusions. Strawberry Tulsi, don’t hold back! Don’t hide your fruits in the rolls of the deep, rich chocolate that envelop you… burst forth with your full flavor and body!
Tasting Notes: Floral, fruity with a hint of fresh herbs, awash in a smooth-on-the-tongue cacao bed. Notes of strawberry and basil come in at the tail end, linger, and slowly fade away.
Origin: Moho Valley, Belize
Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, organic panela (unprocessed evaporated cane juice), organic cacao butter, organic dehydrated strawberry juice powder, organic tulsi krishna, organic dried strawberry (with cane juice)
Lemongrass Thai Lime
Cacao Muse review: When I recently looked online to see if they still have this bar, I was pleasantly doubly surprised — not only is the bar still for sale, they had put up my quote I had sent in: “Never would I have thought you could make a Lemongrass Lime chocolate... so exquisite, so smooth, so subtle, you want it to linger forever... and it does, long after the sun has set.”
There is something delightfully subtle and sublime about the way the lemongrass and the lime fuse into one another and outline this bar.
Tasting Notes: Smooth, well-balanced cacao slowly blends into a zesty citrus-infused wave that carries notes of fresh spring flowers.
Origin: Moho Valley, Belize
Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, organic panela (unprocessed evaporated cane juice), organic cacao butter, organic lemongrass, organic Thai Kaffir lime
Please note that many craft chocolate makers and chocolatiers create special, one-of-a-kind bars for the Awards entries. This is why you may not always find these particular bars on their websites. It might also simply be timing—many of these chocolate bars are made in small batch, and each one is different. Or the maker decides to move on and do another flavor. This is why you might not see the exact same chocolate offerings on their site, at the time you visit, as on these pages of the Cacao Muse.
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To protect the confidentiality of the judging process, I do not publish my ratings or votes for any of the entries. The reviews published here reflect my personal opinion outside of any official selections.
Tulsi is also known as Tulasi or Holy Basil. Latin name: Ocimum tenuiflorum. It is an Ayurvedic herb native to India, and considered a foundational adaptogenic herb—meaning a plant that helps the body handle stress and restore balance, hence the root “adapt.” A sacred herb infused into a sacred food… you can’t get much closer to the divine.