Naturally I was going to make that headline ‘Willie’s 69′ because my mind is warped like that.

So obviously we tend to avoid chocolate…because?

A moment on the lips…

Is a lifetime on the?

HIPS! And dance, dance, dance. Come on, burn if off with Gilad Janklowicz (He could possibly live in Sea Point…ahem…)

You mess with the ‘fro…you gotta go…Gilad Goldskibergrabinowitz?

Anyway enough about my mental state.

I was listening to Jerry D, my mentor, chatting about some bar of chocolate at Woolworths that costs R100.

‘Hmmmm, expensive just like the cocoas other favourite export…to Camps Bay’ I thought to myself.

Interestingly, I always wonder about certain things in life. Like who made chocolate in the first place.

‘Oh we’ll just roast these beans we pulled out of a plant and grind them. Then let’s mix that with milk. Maybe add some sugar. Let that all set. Hmmmm…we’ll eat that!’ It’s just bizarre how things come about. Even more bizarre is how cocaine is made. Hmmmmm let’s get these cocoa leaves. Let’s add in  salt, whitewash powder, petrol (Who ever made petrol from oil in the first place?), sulphuric acid, potassium permanganate and caustic soda.

We’ll then we’ll take this powder and put it in our nose. That will make us feel rad! We’ll want to party at Studio 54 then! Crazy…

Anyway so I had heard about Willies chocolate because he has some sort of show on DSTV and he is passionate about chocolate. How he is not fat with bad skin is a medical mystery of sorts. So I strolled into Woolworths and I should have known the chocolate was going to be expensive because it had no price on it, nor on the shelf. I was at the till and gave the chocolate to the till lady, and asked how much it was.

“R50″

That’s R50 for 80 grams of chocolate. I was obviously going to not take it but then a few things occurred to me:

1) I was at Constantia Woolworths. Not taking something because it is expensive is embarrassing.

2) There was a guy behind me wearing a Breitling. Did I want him to think I’m a plebb? No.

3) I am awesome. Well I suppose the rest of Cape Town is too thanks to the similarly named and lame and pretentious photo website. Remember kids, read it, have your photo taken and you too can be awesome!

So I took the chocolate, and kept it until Sunday night, honestly thinking that it was going to blow a hole in my face with it’s awesome. And it didn’t quite…well at first! It is good chocolate, and it is pure. Dark chocolate is actually really good for you, as long as you don’t eat loads and loads of it (Fatty boom cracker) I’m going to assume you know the health benefits of dark chocolate and so I won’t list them here, I can’t be your babysitter, mentor, your body guard and your lover!

I’m one of those people who is as fascinated about a product I am using, as I am about the history of that product as well as its packaging. I love beautiful stuff, I really do. I hate it that the world is so full of ugly stuff, from cars to the packaging of products.

Like the fact that I won’t wear any other denims other than Nudie jeans. I love the history of the brand, I love the quality, I love the way they wear and I love their pure devotion to denim unlike Levi’s devotion to crap. The story behind a brand is really important to me, and the Willie’s brand has that story.

“Twelve years ago, we planted 10,000 cacao trees in plantations surrounded by bio-diversity so varied that it lays claims to 3% of the world’s flora and 7% of the world’s bird species, as well as the legendary Chuao cacao, the basis of the world’s richest chocolate.

No pesticides, fertilizers or chemicals of any description have ever been used on the cacao trees, which are irrigated by water that runs down from the cloud forest-topped mountains.”

Obviously that’s not the whole story, there is more on the Willie’s website, but I like that passion in a brand.

Now granted, you’re not going to spend R50 on a bar of chocolate everytime you buy some, but I love the passion involved in Willie’s chocolate, in making the purest chocolate around. Putting your life and soul into a product that means something to you and for that to eventually pay off with worldwide success, but more importantly, a product that you can be proud of. Instead of supporting the giants like Nestle who only care about money, let’s be honest. Which is why you can enjoy your coffee at such a good price, because the farmers don’t make much money for their fine commodity.

I always say the story, the meaning, the soul behind a product is key to my enjoyment of that product. Personally I think we’re so used to tasting ‘chocolate’ in it’s most common form which is loads of sugar and milk, that our taste buds are not refined to enjoy pure dark chocolate.

I chose the Willie’s Indonesian 69, Javan Light Breaking, ‘Forgotten Flavours With Light Caramel Notes’

The box says:

Long Forgotten Flavours

Selected from the finest cacao regions of Indonesia, these beautiful beans are carefully roasted in Willie’s chocolate factory in England using antique 100-year-old chocolate making machinery. The beans are then crafted into fine dark chocolate – made the way chocolate used to be (maximum taste from minimum meddling) Indonesian 69 unleashes long forgotten flavours, in two tempting, delicate and delectable squares. One for now…one for then.

Only natural ingredients: Dark chocolate, contains cocoa solids (69% minimum)

Ingredients: Cocoa mass, cocoa butter, Cuban raw cane sugar

By the second bar (You get two in a box) I was already enjoying it more, in fact, I was loving it! And the reason being is that I wasn’t expecting it to taste like a mass produced Cadbury bar. I wasn’t expecting it to be like anything I had tasted before. I was simply enjoying the flavour, enjoying it for what it is. Willie’s chocolate isn’t meant to be eaten by the truck load, it is meant to be enjoyed slowly. It’s like a fine wine that you sip slowly and really play around with it in your mouth until all the flavour is released.

Other chocolates are like Autumn Harvest crackling, you smash them in your face quickly and they produce quick enjoyment without you having to pay too much attention.

And my second piece of Willie’s chocolate was awesome. So often in life, we base things on expectation, past experience, instead of enjoying something for what it is. While we’re doing something we’re thinking ‘But last time this was better’ Because we’re not really living in the present moment are we? And we should be.

Try it, it’ll change your life.

Willies Chocolate is available at Woolworths countrywide, go on, give it a try.

Click here for the Willie’s Cacao website.