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The International Chocolate Awards just named Vigdis Rosenkilde’s 70-percent cocoa Quellouno as the best dark chocolate bar in the world for 2024 – and it’s suitable for vegans.
The awards ceremony is administered by the UK-based International Institute of Chocolate Tasting (IICT), which works to “identify the best chocolate made with the best cacao.” Each year, winners of regional tasting competitions are judged together at a World Final, where Vigdis Rosenkilde’s Quellouno just won first place in category for “plain/origin dark bar.”
Judges gave the Quellouno chocolate bar a particularly high score of 91.7 out of 100. Vigdis Rosenkilde won the same category in 2023 with Kiteni, a different dark bar. Not all of Vigdis Rosenkilde’s products are vegan, so always check the label before buying.
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Dark chocolate, tasting notes, and roasting
The Norwegian brand is named after its founder, Vigdis Rosenkilde, who spends three months a year in Peru where her chocolate is produced, and who previously told the International Chocolate Awards that she is involved in every step of the chocolate-making process.
The Quellouno bar has tasting notes of forest berries, pecan nuts, and cream. According to Rosenkilde, these flavor notes come naturally from the cocoa grown in the jungle above the city of Quellouno, where some of the trees are over 80 years old.
Writing on Instagram about the roasting process and cocoa’s variability from season to season, Rosenkilde said: “For dark chocolate, we roast at a lower temperature to highlight citrus and exotic fruit aromas while retaining baked fruit and nutty undertones.”
The majority of Vigdis Rosenkilde chocolates are dark bars, featuring only cocoa and sugar, and are available in 150 shops in Norway, Denmark, Spain, and Japan, as well as online.
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