WILLIAMSBURG — Especially at this time of year, the idea of chocolate may leave consumers counting calories or feeling guilty — in short, the bliss of chocolate turns stressful.

Enter Suzanne Forman. The former mind-body therapist hopes to relieve the stress of the chocolate experience for customers of her business, Tangle Chocolate, by offering 9-calorie bean-to-bar chocolate slivers that allow the eater to “slow down, take a little second out of the day, and elevate any moment that you are in the middle of.” Think of chocolate as a luxury experience on par with caviar or quality champagne.

Forman opened Tangle Chocolate on Main Street in Williamsburg in April. The space next to the Williamsburg Market includes a lounge with a full coffee and chocolate bar, beer and hard cider and a viewing window to the chocolate factory on-site.

Tangle’s main product, the slivers, is one that only takes a small amount to have a satisfying experience.

“This is a fine chocolate,” she said. “This is not a commodity chocolate where you say ‘oh I’m hungry, I’ll stop at the gas station’ and you eat the entire thing before you’ve left the parking lot. This is to be savored.”

For comparison, federal regulation requires a product classified as “chocolate” to contain at least 10% of cacao beans. Hershey’s, for one, passes that mark by making their bars with 11%. Compare this to the chocolate “thins” at Tangle, which have a cacao bean content over 70%, and a super dark chocolate with as much as 85% cacao beans.

Tangle, named after the congested brush of the South American rainforests, also offers an assortment of baked goods made in house, and a coffee bar with space for visitors to sit in the sleek white washed industrial space, brightened by vibrant furniture and modernist artwork in what had formerly been Cichy’s Garage. The space, since it opened next to the Williamsburg Market eight months ago, has also served as a venue to gather and to hold events, with several coming up in anticipation for the holidays.

Forman’s involvement in the chocolate industry began with a trip to Belize at the bequest of a friend who was hungry to learn about chocolate making. Forman, who anticipated going just “for the ride” on that trip, instead came back educated on the different social justice issues that chocolate is adjacent to.

The trip ignited a passion that would lead her to open “a little destination” some 8 miles from Northampton in Williamsburg, where she had raised her kids, and hopes to create a space where people come who are ignited by the same things she is: social justice, mental health and fine chocolates.

This passion has been ongoing for close to a decade, since for the last 10 years Forman has sold chocolates online. The shop came from her desire to have more interaction with customers.

Aside from supplying a high quality product, a large part of the way Forman sees her role in the industry is also tied to the cause of bringing to light chocolate’s “dark history,” by working with Central and South American farmers and educating her customers on chocolate’s past, a past that is laced with colonization and slavery, and cheapened over time.

The story of chocolate begins in Central America, where the cacao plant originated. When European explorers found the uses for the crop, they were quick to utilize it. The crop was then brought to West Africa, where enslaved labor meant the beans could be processed more cheaply. To this day the majority of cacao beans are exported from Ghana and the Ivory Coast, which together are responsible for 60% of the world’s supply.

As time went on, the Industrial Revolution would leave a permanent mark on chocolate’s development that still reverberates today, one that involves cheapening the product and giving the masses easy access to it.

“Then with the Industrial Revolution it became even cheaper to mass produce chocolate, and so the commodity that most of us grew up on like Hershey’s or Nestle could be had very inexpensively,” she said. “The good thing is that we all got to enjoy chocolate. The bad thing is that the farmers really got the short end of the stick, and chocolate has been devalued as a food.”

Forman hopes to play a small part in reversing the impacts of colonialism and of cheap chocolate by collaborating with South and Central American farmers. She buys her cacao beans from Guatemala, Belize, Bolivia, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Peru. While this increases the prices, Forman also said this process ensures that the beans that are delivered at her door in Williamsburg are “top quality and grown by farmers who really know what they are doing.”

Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.