« B.T. McElrath ~ Salty Dog Chocolate Bar | Main | Leonidas ~ 70% Dark Chocolate »

02/09/2012

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

I haven't tried this bar, but have found different Chuao bars to be somewhat hit or miss. My personal favorite Chuao is Soma's. Truly an excellent bar of chocolate.

Regarding Pralus, I'd definitely give the Cuba bar a try if you have access to it. I'm not a huge Pralus fan, but love the Cuba bar.

I love the Cuba. It's smoke and tobacco. It's an awesome origin bar.

This poor review suffers the general outrage towards to price of this bar and "rare" chocolate in general and the over hyped Chuao region. But it really needed to be done. As mentioned on Twitter, There is a lot more to be explored with these beans and regions. And just because you have access to this region or beans, doesn't mean you have mastered it.

Flavor wise it's okay. But they claim it's balanced with the flavors but I didn't think it was. It jumps around a lot and then it all gets over taken by nothing but wood flavors. If you like like bold tree bark and wood, then this is the bar for you. But if you want more nuanced chocolate, then avoid it. Save the cash for something else.

An exceptionally thorough and informative review! I especially liked these lines "cut-the-head-off-6000-snakes-in-the-jugle-to-get-to-these-beans..." and "Otherwise, I will just go take a tree branch and chew on that for free instead of paying $12.95 for 50 measly grams of overrated chocolate."
It amazes me that the 2010 vintage of this bar was on of my Top Favorites, yet your experience was so bad!
I agree, too, that Chuao is getting over marketed.

It's going to get missed, but I actually didn't mind the taste that much. It would have scored higher on the flavor if that one dominate wood-flavored note wasn't covering everything else up. I just found it to be unbalanced despite their claims, and overpowering with one note. That doesn't make it bad or not exceptional because taste is subjective. But this particular time there was literally nothing extraordinary about this bar in my opinion and it didn't match the hype of the rarity and the price. Like I mentioned above, this particular review suffers from more of a rant like review, but at the end of the day it needed to be said that we are indeed over marketing these rare regions instead of taking the time out to truly master these beans and exploit all of their nuances. It's a mad dash race to have a Peru bar, a Bolivia Bar, a Chuao bar. Who cares where it came from if you are not focused on it's true integrity?

I've chewed on tree branches before. They're not really anything to get excited about. Although I have an excellent stash of especially tasty - and hard to find - branches... and I'd be willing to sell you one for $10.50. Lucky you!

I agree with your sentiments about Chuao hype, but have had some enjoyable experiences with the flavor profiles as well. Not in this particular bar, though.

That chocolate looks horrible for that price! I had some Chuao that I loved before.
Great review!

The comments to this entry are closed.

Categories

Chocolate Bar Reviews

Twitter Updates

    follow me on Twitter
    Blog powered by Typepad