There are really five parts to the chocolate aisle as I see it. The first section would have to be the normal candy aisle. I tend to look at stuff there, but not buy. This time around they had the Double Chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and they sounded interesting enough to try, especially on sale. There wasn't a lot else there that I wanted to try. I had been hoping for a Dark Chocolate 100 Grand bar (which I can't find anywhere), but no luck. Eh, moving on.

The next part of the chocolate selection I hit is also separate from the rest of the chocolate because it's in the natural foods section. There they have a nice array of Dagoba, Equal Exchange (I though I had seen it there - they have their coffee as well), Chocolove, Divine, Thompson, Newman's Own and probably a couple of others I'm forgetting. Green & Black's tends to not be in the natural foods section for some reason and I can't even begin to guess why. So, on my way through I grabbed a Chocolove Chocolatour Grenada Vintage 2004 bar since I had eaten the one I purchased previously without reviewing it (oops). They didn't have any of the Vintage 2005 bars in yet or I would have grabbed some.

The third part is the backside of the chocolate aisle proper where they have cocoa and body chocolate and a lot of liquid chocolate type products. I kind of skipped over this section and moved on to the next which is really another candy section. This one has more specialized candies than the standard candy aisle fare. They have scorpion pops (a lolipop with a real scorpion in it) and other creepy candies. There is a vast array of Kopper's products including the Tiramisu Almonds I had been eager to try. It didn't make the picture, but I grabbed some to give them a try.

And I at last arrived at the main event, the chocolate aisle proper. There they have bars from more than a dozen companies many of which I haven't even heard of outside of Jim's. Once again I had been hoping for a single origin tasting kit from either Dagoba, Valrhona, Cluizel, or E. Guittard but once again they had none. I settled for a bar of E. Guittard Ambanja Bittersweet, a 65% cacao single origin chocolate from Madagascar. I almost grabbed a Scharffen Berger Gianduja bar but they had a funny smell to them so I left them alone. I decided that I would settle for another Vosges bar and grabbed the Black Pearl bar, which has ginger, wasabi, black sesame seeds in 55% cacao dark chocolate. Not that I was really "settling" since I love their bars. The next two bars I grabbed were from Choco-Lina, a company that makes sheep's milk chocolates and puts cute sheep on their labels. One was a Bourbon Vanilla white chocolate and the other was a Pumpkinseed 70% dark chocolate bar (also with sheep's milk). Curiousity got the best of me on these. I loved the sound of a good bourbon vanilla and the pumpkinseed one just really made me curious.

Satisfied with my small haul of chocolate goodies (and some soda, hot sauce, and potato chips) I made my way toward the exit and stopped to see what the new impulse buy items are. There is always an array of new and interesting candy near the registers and this time they had the Hershey's Sweet and Salty Granola Bar (with pretzels!) and that sounded just dandy (it sounded so much better than it turned out to be) so I tossed it in the cart and checked out.

I love this store beyond words and I'm beginning to think that once every three months might not be enough. Even at an hour and a half each way I don't mind the drive when there is a store this great at the end of it. And, in a few days when things are a little less hectic, I'm going to have a lot of fun tearing into these items and reviewing them. Also, next time I go to Jungle Jim's I'm going to try and get them to let me take pictures. Photography is not allowed and I feel like it's limiting me in my ability to describe just how great this store is.