Bella Viva Orchards - a review and a Sweet Giveaway!

  On my travels online, one of the best places I've found is Bella Viva Orchards.  And, for those who haven't heard of them yet, I'd love to introduce them to you.

Located in Northern California, you can find the Martino family's sustainable orchards. They produce amazingly delicious fresh and dried fruit, nuts and chocolate. From there, they are sold at local farmer's markets, select restaurants and, luckily for us, online to customers across the country. Bella Viva takes extreme care to produce the highest quality and they supervise everything themselves, from growing to packaging and delivery.

Bella Viva means beautiful long life in Italian and the orchards were named for the Martino daughters, Vivian and Belle.

Martha Stewart featured Bella Viva as her "secret source" for holiday host gifts after discovering them at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market in San Francisco and it's clear to me why. You can check out her video and see some of their delicious and beautiful dried fruit here .

Bella Viva is incredibly kind and generous and sent me some of their dried fruits to taste.

I received:

organic dried white nectarines
organic dried pears
organic dried persimmons
and fabulous dried orange slices

They were all gorgeously packaged and beautiful to look at, like little works of art, but the best part was looking at the ingredients and seeing simply: Persimmons, pears, or nectarines -- no preservatives, no sugar added. And, let me just say that the taste was utterly amazing, so sweet, so delicious, better than any candy I've ever had. While some women may want jewelry or flowers for Valentine's Day, I'd be thrilled with Bella Viva dried fruit or their chocolate covered fruit! It's really that good and I love the fresh healthy taste. It's like no other dried fruit I've ever found. They make an amazing snack at any time and can also be used in recipes. The orange slices are my favorite so far. I really love oranges and these bring all the flavor. I put them in my tea also. Fabulous!

And, now that Valentine's Day is almost here, Bella Viva kindly sent me a special treat:


Simply irresistable Organic Dark Chocolate Cherries

Now, these are not those treacly sweet liquidy things from the drugstore.
These are premium Organic Dried Bing Cherries grown on the Bella Viva Orchards dipped in rich luscious organic dark chocolate. They are good sized cherries, moist with a bit of tartness. The sweet chocolate mixed with the tart cherries created an explosion of joy for my tastebuds. 




If you're searching around for an interesting Valentine's Day present, Bella Viva Organic Dark Chocolate Cherries make great gifts as they are beautifully packaged in 8 oz. gift bags. 

And, because they are so cool and so generous, Bella Viva has offered one of my readers the chance to win a bag of these delicious Organic Dark Chocolate Cherries as well.


Also, they are going to give my readers a 15% discount on anything at Bella Viva Orchards online. Just use the coupon code strangedaze which is good until March 10, 2012. How awesome is that? Check out these fruits - strawberries, apricots, mango, pineapple, apples, plums. I already have my next order in mind! 


You can also order wonderful gift baskets, chocolates, trail mix and nuts.

And check out the, just added, Valentine's Day specials.


So, to enter, just follow the Rafflecopter and good luck to all!







a Rafflecopter giveaway




Disclosure: I was provided product from the sponsor in order to do this review but all opinions are strictly mine.