Bean-to-Bar chocolates at Woolies

After spending 25 years automating factories, the contrasting simplicity and authenticity of the artisanal food and drink industry looked appealing to chocolate maker Pieter de Villiers. He started spending all his free time visiting food markets and researching artisanal industries, before trying his hand at making chocolate from the bean.

De Villiers discovered that, while most of the world’s cocoa beans come from Africa, very little chocolate is made on the continent and even less is made by Africans in African-owned factories. DV Chocolate, however, is made in a small chocolate factory in the Western Cape using high quality UTZ certified cocoa beans from the Bundibugyo district of Uganda, making it authentically African.

What started as a hobby in the double garage of their home, slowly migrated into a family business with Pieter and his wife, Cornell, launching their Single Origin range of 5 dark chocolate bars. At this stage the company was the first Artisan ‘Bean to Bar’ chocolate company in South Africa and one of only a few in the world. The family business operated from their home in Hermanus until January 2012 when they ran out of space and moved the business to a wine farm in Southern Paarl where the chocolate factory and tasting centre now occupies an historic Cape Dutch homestead.

This bar is for the purist, containing only two ingredients namely cocoa beans and unrefined sugar, with a 70% cocoa content. It is an easy eating dark chocolate with underlying woody, smoky and cherry flavour notes.

This is a fairly light chocolate bar with the orange lingering on your palate long after you have finished. The bar contains 68.5 % cocoa with the rest made up of orange peel extract, ground vanilla powder and unrefined sugar.

In the tradition of the Aztecs who used to enjoy their cacao drinks with cinnamon and chilli, this bar offers a subtle balance of chocolatiness and spice. The cocoa content is 70% with the rest made up of ground chilli, cinnamon and unrefined sugar.

For the person who likes something crunchy, with a little added salt to enhance the flavours. This bar contains 70 % cocoa with the addition of whole bits of roasted cocoa nib, sea salt and unrefined sugar.

This bar of milk chocolate combines cocoa beans from Uganda with Arabica Coffee beans from the same country. It is milk chocolate with a difference: no dairy fats and a high cocoa content. This milk chocolate is specially designed for the health conscious that do not enjoy dark chocolate. It contains 51% cocoa, double the amount of a normal milk chocolate, and only healthy cocoa butter. The remainder is made up of roasted coffee beans, skim milk solids and unrefined sugar.

Because of the small-batch, artisanal nature of these chocolates, they're only available in certain stores and regions. 

Shop De Villiers Artisan Chocolates now