Skip to content

How BuyGourmetChocolates Reviews Products

Celeste Marchand, Founder & Editor-in-Chief
How this guide gets made — where the picks come from, what we read and weigh, and how affiliate links keep the lights on.

What this site does

This is an editorial operation. We read sensory review archives, follow producer sourcing disclosures, aggregate owner communities, and track specialty confectionery trends across three continents. Every recommendation starts with criteria — cacao origin, fermentation handling, percentage range, price per ounce, shipping reliability — not with whatever a brand wants to push. Celeste Marchand brings over a decade of that work to every buying guide, so the site can tell you which $25 bar beats a $300 box for a given occasion, and which splurge actually earns the spend.

How we evaluate

  • We weigh origin and fermentation disclosures against a producer's harvest and sourcing history.
  • We compare percentage, texture, and flavor notes across review archives to spot outlier picks.
  • We calculate price per ounce and shipping thresholds to sort budget, mid-range, and splurge tiers.
  • We read owner-community threads and retailer policies to flag reliability before a pick goes live.

Affiliate disclosure

Some links on this site are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you buy through them. That never changes what we recommend — the criteria still decide the picks, and the commission never enters the ranking.

How to reach Celeste

Real feedback, corrections, or shop-floor stories that contradict something on this site: use the contact page. A real person reads what comes through.