Most chocolate-covered espresso beans hide the bean behind a layer of cheap chocolate. Ours do the opposite. The 55% cacao coating is the same stoneground dark chocolate we make our discs and bars from, bright, fruity, deliberately gritty, ground on hand-carved granite millstones at our factory in Somerville, MA. The espresso bean inside stays whole, so each one is a real espresso bean, not a husk fragment.

Our cacao is Direct Trade Certified, Taza was the first U.S. chocolate maker to build a third-party-audited Direct Trade program, and we pay our partner farmers above Fair Trade prices. The espresso beans are fresh-roasted and organic. The cane sugar is organic. There’s organic cocoa butter and organic vanilla beans, and nothing else. No soy lecithin. No artificial flavors. No insect-derived shellac. You can see who grows our cacao and what we pay them in our annual Transparency Report.

A small handful is a real caffeine boost, about 135 mg of caffeine per 28-gram (1-ounce) serving, comparable to a strong espresso shot. Eat them after dinner instead of dessert. Crush a few over vanilla ice cream. Drop two or three into a flat white. Pack them for the trail when trail mix isn’t going to cut it.

Bright, fruity 55% dark chocolate up front. Roasted coffee bitterness from the whole bean in the middle. A satisfyingly gritty finish from the stone grinding, that texture is the cacao telling you it hasn’t been over-refined.

Each 28-gram serving delivers approximately 135 mg of caffeine, most of it from the espresso bean, a small amount from the cacao. That’s roughly the caffeine of a strong shot of espresso per ounce. The full 3.5-oz bag contains roughly 470 mg of caffeine. Eat accordingly.

If you like these, you’ll probably also like our Wicked Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds, Wicked Dark Chocolate Covered Cashews, or the 70% Cacao & Up dark chocolate bars.