One of my favorite stores to wander into when I'm downtown is the Ten Thousand Villages Fair Trade Store. The merchandise is always high quality and a remarkably good value despite the fact that the people who craft the items are assured timely and fair payment for their work, plus ongoing contracts to guarantee future income.

Now Fair Trade has come to the wine world with the first nationwide introduction of Fair Trade Certified wine. So what does "Fair Trade" really mean? In the wine world, many family vineyards in developing countries have a tough time meeting market demand for quality grapes AND paying their workers enough, ensuring safe working conditions, and getting a good enough price for the crop to eke out their own living.

Fair Trade Certified means a producer is guaranteed a minimum price for the grapes, their workers earn a living wage, and wine-producing communities receive community development funding. At Stellar Organics Fair Trade Certified vineyard in South Africa, for example, workers have established a commercial community organic vegetable garden with its own educational garden used to train children in organic farming. Income from the garden and vineyard go into a university education fund for children of the workers.

Continue reading "Wine of the Week: Fair Trade wine" after the jump.

According to their mission statement, sweetriot's goal is to "create a more just and celebrated multicultural world for our next generation." A fine mission, to be sure, but what they actually do is sell a line of chocolate covered cacao nibs. Appropriately named "peaces", all of their products are all-natural, gmo-free, dairy-free, kosher, gluten-free and feature only fair trade chocolate. In addition to carrying a social cause, they also taste great. The nibs come in three primary flavors, divided and named by the cacao content of the chocolate that enrobes the nibs. Flavor 50 is a mild dark chocolate and almost similar in flavor to milk chocolate, though it is dairy-free. Flavor 65 is a classic dark chocolate and flavor 70 (pictured) is extra dark and boosted with a bit of espresso.

My favorite way to eat them is to mix the three different peace mixes - 50, 65 and 70 - together. The sweeter 50 takes the edge off the dark 70, while leaving a nice espresso taste. Basically, they all just get along - and there's no need to overthink it because it tastes so good.

If you want to give them a taste, the Happy holly-days pack and Hanukah packs deliver one tin of each flavor and also make great little gifts. You can also try the newest flavor, 70cinn, which is a limited edition flavor released just for the holidays.

Zapatista coffee offers not only an amazing cup of joe, but a chance to do something good for those who have less. Cafe Rebelion, formerly know as The Human Bean Company, aims to develop a direct market for products from the Chiapas area of Mexico. Indigenous producers participate in all levels of advice, consent and participation of the coffee project.

Cafe Rebelion eliminates the middle man of the coffee production and enables the farmers of the Zapatista co-operatives to receive the maximum profits for their labors. The coffee is grown among the natural vegetation on indigenous communal land, as opposed to harsh, chemically produced coffee from the large, deforested coffee plantations.

Many people initially buy the Cafe Rebelion products, honey or coffee, in an effort to help with a worthy project. But after experiencing the purity of both the coffee and honey they come back time and again for the smoothe taste. I bought a bag of the light roast at our church and am now 100% devoted to the company and the coffee. I will never again be able to purchase Folger's or Kroger brand coffee. And with the added knowledge that this is a genuinely socially minded company, I can feel good about my addiction.

CaféDirect now claims that its new TeaDirect brand has overtaken Brooke Bond tea to become the 7th largest tea brand in the UK.

Not that I drink tea (how un-English is that!) but both my Polish and French friends do (Hi Lukasz, Hi Nic) not with milk but with a slice of lemon. Coffee is my thing - and I always return to the Café Direct brand (medium roast, the one in the blue bag) not just because it is fairtrade, although that is important, but because it just tastes the best!

I've just checked the tea-bags in the cupboard. While they are still fairtrade they are produced by Clipper Teas. No idea where this brand fall in the sales league though.

 

The May issue of the Observer Food Monthly -

• Nigel Slater puts the season's vegetables and herbs to good use with braised spring vegetables, grilled chorizo with almonds sherry vinegar and spring cabbage, green chicken and coconut soup and salmon with pea puree.
• Green and Black's Maya Gold, the first British Fairtrade project, is the livelihood for a whole area of Belize.
• Scottish children have the worst teeth in Britain. But can the blame really be laid at the door of sugary sweets?
• Willie Mae Seaton explains how, post Katrina,  food is the key ingredient in the regeneration of New Orleans.
• New books for foodies.
• Can you shop at the supermarket and be eco-friendly? Only if you drink carbon-neutral tea.
• Gardener Diarmuid Gavin at his favourite table in Eden, Dublin.

Here in the UK we are coming to the end of Fairtrade Fortnight. This is all part of the the Fairtrade Foundations promotion to raise awareness of its goals and products - basically this revolves around giving a fair price for a crop in an attempt to eleviate world poverty.

On-line there are plenty of stores where you can buy fairtraded products -

• Traidcraft - a founding member of the Fairtrade Foundation
• Simply Fair - claims he largest range of Fairtrade certified food products online in the UK
• Goodness Direct - good for special dietary needs (gluten-free, diary free, Kosher etc
• OneFood - fresh produce from British producers - not all Fairtrade is Third World
• New Consumer Shop - wide range of products from fashion, books and toiletries in addition to food items
• Greenol - generally organic products but also ethically aware, Fairtrade and environmentally friendly.

This afternoon, while running a few errands, I stopped into a relatively new gourmet market nestled away in a strip mall. I browsed around for a while, checking out their prepared foods (which included sous vide packages) and trying to hide my sticker-shock expression over the price of some of their artisan American cheeses.
 
Not looking to spend a whole lot, I settled on a bar of Dagoba Organic Chocolate. I had originally tried one of their bars several months ago, an organic dark chocolate with lavender and blueberries. I usually shy away from chocolate with other flavoring, but this looked worth the risk. The lavender was not overpowering, as I'd feared, and the blueberries added a good textural contrast to the chocolate.

Having tried one bar with added flavorings already, this time I tried their Conacado Bar, named for the farmer-owned cooperative in the Dominican Republic that produces the cacao. For a 73% bar, it was surprisingly creamy, with some slightly woody notes and hints of toasted nuts.

I'm told that Dagoba also produces a bar with rosemary, although I've yet to find a store near me that carries it.