Wir lieben Schokolade und Wein nicht nur, weil wir fuer uneingschraenkten Lebensgenuss sind. Sondern auch, weil diese zwei Produkte, wie wenig andere, dafuer sprechen, dass voller Lebensgenuss und komplette Nachhaltigkeit miteinander Hand in Hand gehen koennen.

Vier Schokoladen, vier Weine. Die Schokoladen sind von Original Beans, die Weine von 4 Winzern, die zu den fuehrenden Produzenten ‘natuerlicher’ Spitzenweine gehoeren. Also biodynamisch am Hang, und ohne Chemie im Keller.

Wir haben 300 Weine verkostet, um die richtigen Paarungen zu finden Ueberzeugt Euch selbst und schaut vorbei am Stand auf der Biofach, oder bestellt z.B. bei www.probiowein.de

The issue of child slavery in the chocolate industry has – thanks to good journalistic work in recent years – become widely publicized. Here is a very good summary from CNN.

We don’t want to be moralistic about all the companies who participate in exploitative cacao production, including some brands who explicitly speak about the issues, but don’t change hem. We simply cannot understand such business ethics.

For the consumer, we have a few simple guidelines to avoid the worst:

1. Buy only chocolate worth more than $3 per bar.

2. Eliminate any chocolate that does not declare its country of origin. Most likely, an undeclared chocolate product originates from West Africa – Ivory Coast, Ghana, or Nigeria.

3. Look for certification labels (Organic, Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, Utz Certified).

Already on the decline worldwide, big trees face a dire future due to habitat fragmentation, selective harvesting by loggers, exotic invaders, and the effects of climate change, warns an article published this week in New Scientist magazine.

Giant trees offer critical habitat and forage for wildlife, while transpiring massive amounts of water through their leaves, contributing to local rainfall. Old trees also lock up massive amounts of carbon — in some forests they can account for up to a quarter of living biomass.

According to field research in Cost Rica by scientists David and Deborah Clark, tropical forests could shrink over time. The largest, oldest trees would progressively die off and tend not to be replaced. Alarmingly, this might trigger a positive feedback that could destabilize the climate: as older trees die, forests would release some of their stored carbon into the atmosphere, prompting a vicious circle of further warming, forest shrinkage and carbon emissions.

Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0126-big_trees.html#ixzz1klxd6KAO

Amsterdam’s botanical garden is one of the oldest in the world and has also played a key role in spreading cacao and coffee trees around the world. Now the Hortus has opened a unique shop with “plant-story” products, including Original Beans chocolates and a honey from bees that live in the Hortus itself. Join us this Sunday for the Theater of Taste , starting at 14:00.

Transformational times call for tranformational actions, and the German Advisory Council on Global Change (Wissenschaftliche Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen, WBGU) thinks that in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, people need to transform the way they live and embrace a new global social contract. In a new, 424 page report called “World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability”, they look at everything from governance structure to the importance of change-agents for what they call “a  great transformation” to a low-carbon sustainable society.

Rather than focusing only on needed changes, the report looks at the systems and transitions already underway, including political, technological, and financial structures and individual efforts.  Then it provides strategy recommendations to move these developments forward. Two of the key needs for the transformation, according to WBGU, are proactive states and individual responsibility.  Read more of this important document here.

Read this great, crisp article on chocolate and Original Beans from UK’s young chef of the year 2010, Stevie Parle. And make sure you get the recipe for his heavenly, flourless chocolate cake.

Stevie trained at The River Cafe, Moro and Petersham Nurseries and has travelled the world seeking out new recipes and ways of cooking. A natural progression from his pop up project, Moveable Kitchen, the Dock Kitchen restaurant, in designer Tom Dixon’s Portobello Dock showrooms in London’s Notting Hill, opened in 2009 to great critical acclaim.

Next time you drop by Virunga National Park to watch Mountain Gorillas, make sure you stay at the Park’s stunning, newly opened Mikeno Lodge (pics below)! And get your locally sourced Original Beans Cru Virunga bar. Thanks to Jaime for taking this shot on trip to Bukavu.

No more than a few hundred of these blue-throated macaws still roam the Beni landscape from cacao island to cacao island.

As Science Daily reports, new study shows that because these climate models don’t account for species competition and movement, they could grossly underestimate future extinctions.

The Sustainable Restaurant Association of the UK has audited and approved Original Beans as the first-ever chocolate company to meet their sustainability standards and become a recommended supplier.

The SRA’s standards involve all ecological and social aspects of a product lifecycle, including certifications, energy use, and waste management.

We thank George Clark of SRA whose passion, know-how and advise we highly value.

A happy new year has started for the Mountain Gorillas of Virunga Park.

It is with great joy that we can announce the birth of two new mountain gorilla babies discovered by Virunga rangers in the first days of 2012. The babies were born into two different gorilla familes: the Kabirizi and the Mapuwa families. The Mapuwa family is now at 17 members and the Kabirizi family, which has experienced both births and deaths in 2011, has 33 members and is Virunga’s largest family.

Here is mother Maheshe of the Kabirizi family with her 2nd child. Her first baby died in April of 2010 from natural causes.