Best New England Chocolatiers

Compiled by Krissy O’Shea and featuring additional Yankee Food Awards winners

In “A Taste For the Good Life,” (season 7, episode 4) we head to Maine to see what goes into making Ragged Coast Chocolates’ award-winning confections. Here’s a sampling of even more top-notch New England chocolatiers.

Ragged Coast Chocolates
Steve and Kate Shaffer began making chocolates out of their home kitchen on Isle au Haut in 2007. Today it’s from a production facility in Portland, but the rural Maine farmscape still informs their chocolates, as evidenced in the Maine Farm Market Truffle Collection. In flavors like blueberry-black pepper, Maine mint, and New England pie pumpkin, every truffle features an ingredient grown on a Hancock or Knox County farm. raggedcoastchocolates.com

Blue Bandana
This subsidiary of Burlington, Vermont’s Lake Champlain Chocolates produces meticulously sourced and crafted single-origin dark chocolate bars developed by Eric Lampman, son of Lake Champlain founder Jim Lampman. lakechamplainchocolates.com

Chequessett Chocolate
This café-workshop in North Truro on Cape Cod makes delicious chocolates, mostly dark, with some milk chocolate and single-origin bars in the mix, as well as confections like barks, brittles, and toffees. chequessettchocolate.com

Enna Chocolate
Enna Grazier produces exquisite single-origin chocolates out of her small “factory” in Epping, New Hampshire, and her tasting notes (“toasted sweet biscuits, tobacco, milk, and a tantalizingly subtle tannin”) read like a chocophile’s dream. ennachocolate.com

Goodnow Farms Chocolates
At their headquarters in Sudbury, Massachusetts, Tom and Monica Rogan make dark chocolate bars, some blended with local maple syrup or ground almonds, as well as hot cocoa mixes, from beans sourced from individual fair-trade farms. goodnowfarms.com

Somerville Chocolate
In addition to selling his small-batch bars to the general public, owner Eric Parkes runs a chocolate CSA, whose members pay in advance for a delivery of multiple bars, mostly dark but also some tasty blends, such as white chocolate with chilies and chai-spiced cacao nibs. somervillechocolate.com

Taza Chocolate
Known for its gritty stone-ground style, Taza produces a vast line of bars, Mexican-style hot chocolate disks, barks, and chocolate-covered nuts at its Somerville, Massachusetts, factory. tazachocolate.com

Learn more about New England’s newest batch of premium-chocolate makers in the 2018 feature “Bean to Bar” by Krissy O’Shea