Ritual Chocolate (United States)

When Robbie Stout and Anna Davies started Ritual Chocolate in 2010, they hoped to create a product that was well received by many people. After receiving multiple awards from an international chocolate tasting competition, they are positive they have achieved that goal. Park City-based Ritual Chocolate was recently recognized by the Academy of Chocolate for nine of its chocolate bars.  Ritual's 100% cacao bar won silver in the group. Ritual Chocolate also walked away with four silver placements in the "bean to bar, under 80% cocoa solids" category, as well as two bronze honours. Ritual won two awards in the flavoured dark chocolate bar with its bourbon barrel aged, 75% cacao bar and the vanilla bar, which contains 70% cacao.

Davies and Stout spent about a year researching and testing different methods of chocolate making before they launched Ritual Chocolate in Denver, eight years ago. They started with one bar and slowly added more over time. Now, they have 13 bars and make everyone at their shop on Iron Horse Drive. For Ritual creating each new bar takes about six months from conception to production, he said. The couple spends months to find a farmer who is both eco-friendly in their methods and ethical in their treatment of the workforce. The machine Ritual Chocolate uses sometimes makes production difficult as well, since it is more than 100 years old, but strong dedication to old-fashioned craft seems works fine for the maker.