20°N & 20°S

Montezuma's ~ Ecuador 71%

 

 

 

 

Via their website:

Ecuador is a small but perfectly formed part of South America's Andean highland. This chocolate comes from the now rare Rios Arriba bean recognised as one of the finest varieties of cocoa in the world due to the intense concentration of flavour. 
 
The highest cocoa content has a soft and subtle flavour with just a touch of earthiness you may expect from such an aromatic and flowery variety. This chocolate just melts away and leaves you craving for the very last crumb in the carton!

 

 

 

 

 

Montezuma's Ecuador 71%

 

Type: Bittersweet

Bean Varietal: Arriba Nacional

Ingrdients: Cocoa solids (71%), Sugar (29%), Vanilla (Less than 1%)

Sample Size: 100g or 3.5oz

 

Appearance: Smooth, simple non-monogrammed molding, a bit nicked and matted from plastic wrapping, still shiny on most of the bar, deep dark brown color.

Score: 89

Snap: Deep, robust snap, firm and loud snap with clean break lines.

Score: 93

Aroma: Roasted cocoa nose, nutty, soft, lightly sweet, slightly tangy aroma, coffee notes, cinnamon, and lavender.

Score: 94

Taste: Roasted cocoa, earthy, spicy, cereal grains, slight hints of leather, very low-acidity, but a lightly tangy after taste. Mild bitterness but it's subdued by the dryness of the texture, soft and subtly wood flavors, a small hint of berries and lavender on the finish.

Score: 94

Texture: Hard then opens up smooth and creamy, medium-fast melt time, dry and leaves the palate dry.

Score: 91

 

Another fairly complicated chocolate. But I am happy this time with the Arriba Nacional Beans. I haven't really been too keen on them as their flavors are interesting yet way too delicate at times. And the drying effect these beans seem to have on the palate isn't my favorite. But Montezuma's seems to have really dragged out some raw flavors on these cocoa beans. Their packaging suggests subtle hints of earthiness. That's true in a way when trying to sort out all the different elements in this bar that make it earthy. But to me, I found it to be fairly robust for an Arriba Nacional bar.

They pulled out earthy, rustic flavors with the roasted cocoa, and the lavender is not too perfume-y or flowery it doesn't over take the palate. I am really impressed with the spiciness, and the cereal grains on the flavor. There is an interesting bitterness that surrounds the entire palate but the dryness of the chocolate sort of eliminates the impact of how bitter the chocolate is.

Still the dryness of Nacional beans leaves little to be desired in my opinion. There is dry, and then there is palate killing dryness. I am not a fan of that quality. But overall I am happy with the flavors that were able to come through on this bar.

 

 

Final Score: 92.2

score
B+

Montezuma's ~ Peru 70%

 

 

 

 

Peru is the new hot origin for single origin chocolate bars these days. Peruvian beans are being sought after by all the high end chocolate makers from around the world.

Earlier this summer, Art Pollard of Amano Chocolates, Stephane Bonnat of Bonnat Chocolatier, Alan McClure of Patric Chocolates, and Colin Gasko of Rogue Chocolatier all took a trek to Peru to source beans and discover the region. Now their origin bars are coming out. 

Although cacao has been growing in the region for centuries, this bandwagon for new origin regions or newly discovered cacao varieties is certainly exciting for the chocophiles.

 

Via Rueters:

"It's truly the year of Peru," said Stephane Bonnat, the director of commercial relations for Bonnat chocolates of France and the descendant of a long line of chocolatiers."

UNDISCOVERED VARIETIES

The genetic diversity of Peruvian cocoa has protected crops from pests and disease that have hindered production in neighboring Ecuador and Brazil, according to a 2006 Annals of Botany report.

Numerous varieties also entice those in constant search for exotic new flavor profiles.

"There are types of cocoa plants in Peru whose flavor is not yet known. I feel like Christopher Columbus discovering a new world," said Valentine Tibere, an ambassador from the Salon du Chocolat, a Paris-based trade group.

 

So with that new varieties, new tastes, new flavor profiles to discover and Montezuma's has a pure organic version.

Via Montezuma's website:

Peru has everything you would expect from an ancient and sophisticated South american civilisation; fortunately for us, this includes some of the world's finest cocoa. The organic cocoa we use is a blend of Trinitario and Criolla beans, best described as Ariba quality: that means the best of the very best! Our cocoa from Peru comes from a cooperative made up of many tiny plantations in the San martin and Huanuco region to the east of the Andes in the tropical lowlands. That description just wants you to dive in and experience the mystery of Peru. 
 
This chocolate contrasts interestingly to our 73% cocoa Dominican Republic chocolate, in that it has a distinctively fruity flavour with a hint of tropical fowers. We don't even add vanilla to this chocolate because of the naturally fruity overtones. This is a mild and natural rich chocolate which is simply brilliant!

And of course comes Montezuma's stamps of various approvals.

 

 

 

 

Montezuma's Peru 70%

 

Type: Bittersweet

Bean Varietal: Blend, Criollo and Trinitario

Ingredients: Cocoa solids (70%), Sugar.

Sample Size: 100g or 3.5oz

 

Appearance: Simple lined moldings, shiny and smooth with a few minor nicks and matted marks on the surface, deep brown color.

Score: 90

Snap: Deep robust snap, frim crisp snap sound, clean break lines with a few crumbles.

Score: 93

Aroma: Delicate, lightly sweet nose, light roasted cocoa, mild hints of spice, creamy and nutty, a little floral.

Score: 94

Taste: Slow opening, sweet and lightly flowery, big cedar wood and tangerine characters up front, inky and lightly bitter, spicy, nice bold fruit characters, some lingering bitterness and floral notes on the finish. Also a little spiciness like black pepper on the finish. Very slight though.

Score: 96

Texture: A little hard at first, smooth, and creamy once it opens up on the palate. Medium-long melt time.

Score: 92

This chocolate took it's sweet time to open up. It was a little hard in texture but did eventually open up a creamy and smooth texture.

It's sweet chocolate with lingering bitterness and flowers on the finish, but opens up with sugar and light flowery taste. There is a big, beautiful cedar wood taste as soon as the chocolate opens up on the palate. A little spiciness to go along with big wood and tangerine flavors.

Interesting that they compare this to their Dominican Republic bar. Both are extremely woody in character. Though they are right, the Peru is distinctly more fruity and floral with no vanilla added to it. Also the cedar wood on the Peru is distinctly bigger. With the Dominican Republic bar I wanted to melt it down and drink it. It had savory wood characters that I wanted to add spices and chillies to. With this bar I wanted to savor it tiny bit by tiny bit. It's sweet, floral, fruity, with bright cedar woods.

You will need to take your time with this chocolate. You will get the wood characters right away, but you will need to savor a few squares before you fully understand all the nuances on the chocolate. It's pretty complex chocolate. Despite having only a few descriptors in the review for taste and aroma, I am still thinking about this chocolate.

 

Final Score: 93

 

    score
     A-

Montezuma's ~ Very Dark Chocolate 73%, Dominican Republic

 

 

 

73% dark chocolate using beans from the Dominican Republic. As in previous reviews of Montezuma's, they use all organic ingredients, and do well to highlight all the proper stamps for their products.

 

 

Traces of nuts.

Genetically Modified Free.

Additive and Coloring Free.

Soy Free.

British Made.

Preservative Free.

Vegetarian.

Organic.

Vegan.

Gluten Free

May contain traces of milk.

 

I always laugh at the conundrum of the Vegan stamp, but the possibility of milk stamp at the end. This is also fair trade chocolate.

 

Click to emlarge images.

 

 

 

 

Very Dark Chocolate 73%

 

Type: Bittersweet

Bean Varietal: Trinitario

Ingredients: Organic cocoa solids (73%), Organic sugar (26%), Organic Vanilla (less than 1%).

Sample Size: 100g or 3.5oz

 

Appearance: Smooth and simple non-monogrammed molding. A few matted spots from the plastic wrap, a tiny bit ashy, but still very shiny and smooth. Thick bar, simple lined pattern for the molding. It's also very dark brown in color.

Score: 89

Snap: Very firm snap, loud hard snap sound, clean break lines.

Score: 97

Aroma: Big roasted cocoa aromas, smoky, rich roasted coffee notes, nutty almonds, coconut, lightly floral.

Score: 94

Taste: Bitter right up front, a little inky, slow to open up, roasted cocoa, rich wood flavors especially new wood flavors and cedar wood, very subdued berry flavors hidden underneath the big wood flavors, lingering nutty flavors on the finish. Long flavor experience. Due to the medium-long melt time it took it's time to open up giving more than enough time to think about this chocolate and it's flavor profiles.

Score: 94

Texture: Smooth and creamy, but medium-long melt time.

Score: 95

 

This is fairly straight forward chocolate. It takes it's time to open up allowing you to get the full impact of it's flavors. There is nothing exactly exotic about the flavors, but the wood and nuttiness of this chocolate is fantastic. It's wonderfully rich, very bitter right up front but it doesn't discourage any of the other rich flavors to come through. There is an inky, berry flavor in this chocolate but it's very slight and hidden underneath all the nutty flavors and wood. Still fun to try and find it.

I almost want to melt it down for hot chocolate because of the rich woody and nutty flavors on it. Add some sugar, vanilla, and steamed milk, and maybe some cayenne or a smoky chili pepper to it.

The matted appearance from the plastic drags this score down a bit, but I need to say that I love this kind of protection for the chocolate. It keeps the aromas and flavors sealed for a longer shelf life. Most people don't know that chocolate can last for a very long period of time. The purists will tell you to consume in a few weeks after it was molded to a few months for optimum flavor profile. They are absolutely right, but chocolate can keep for a while.

 

Final Score: 93.8

 

    score
     A-

 

Montezuma's ~ Papua New Guinea 64%

Montezuma's organic dark chocolate with beans sourced from Papua New Guinea. Organic chocolate makers from the UK with a bittersweet single origin bar, part of their "Exciting Bars" collection.

Via their website:

A wild and raw country with an immense landscape that produces cocoa the like of which you will love or hate with some degree of passion. This cocoa comes from smallholder plantations in the Island Regions where the husbandry is uninhibitedly rural without a hint of intensive farming. Combined with uniquely rich and fertile soil the farmers proudly produce cocoa without comparison. 
 
Made from only Trinitario beans, this chocolate has a distinctive smoky tobacco flavour that needs to be savoured and enjoyed in a darkened and private room so nobody can disturb the experience!

Additional Information

Traces of Nuts
Genetically Modified Free
Additive and coloring Free
Soya Free
British Made
Preservative Free
Gluten Free
Vegan Friendly
Vegetarian Friendly
May contain slight traces of milk.

Again, they have the most certifiable details about what is and isn't in this chocolate. I love how that last stamp comes after the Vegan friendly stamp.

As mentioned in the review for the Venezuelan Milk, they have a tremendous commitment to fair trade and natural ingredients in their products. They give great details about their company and their ethics which I fully support.

What's mostly missing from their website though, are more details on the regions they source their beans from. Papua New Guinea is a strange but interesting place where new species of animals, bugs and reptiles are still being discovered. Describing the landscape of where this cocoa comes from would be amazing. Lot's of chocolate makers have a Papua New Guinea bar of some sort in their collection but not too many talk about the region itself.

Yes, in the second image, the dark smudge on the chocolate is indeed from my nose. I couldn't stop smelling the aroma on this bar and was fascinated with a few distinctive aromas. I got carried away.

Papua New Guinea Dark

Type: Bittersweet, 64%

Bean Varietal: Trinitario

Ingredients: Cocoa solids (64%), sugar (34%), Vanilla (<1%).

Sample Size: 100g or 3.5oz



Appearance: Smooth, deep brown chocolate color with simple non-monogrammed molding, a few plastic marks on the top surface. And no I am not taking points off for my nose mark.

Score: 92

Snap: Light snap for a thick layer of chocolate. Firm and crisp sounding.

Score: 93

Aroma: Deep, rich smokiness, fire roasted red chilies almost distinctively South American despite the cocoa beans being from Papua New Guinea, pen ink, deep dark berries, roasted cocoa, very slight hints of flowers, and a barely noticeable hint of cinnamon.

Score: 95

Taste: Sweet, deep, rich cocoa flavors, spicy with big chili flavors, woody, inky, a little banana-y, berries, more roasted chilies from retro-olfaction. Big bold flavors, complex, and rich.

Score: 93

Texture: Overall smooth texture but with a a few slight hints of graininess, creamy, medium melt time.

Score: 94

Big bold chocolate with rich smoky flavors, fire roasted chilies on the aroma and lingering finish on the palate. Big berry flavors, wood, and flowery berries. Their website describes smoky tobacco, I didn't pick up tobacco as much as I picked up distinctive roasted chilies.

There is a lot going on with this chocolate. It's very complex  and flavorful, but most curious of all is the chilies. It's all over the aroma as smoky chilies mixed with bold berry aromas.

There weren't a whole lot of subtitles with the flavor of the chocolate. It's all pretty straight forward, but there are a few small hints of flowers and cinnamon on the aroma to keep it interesting.

Delicious chocolate, fun to sit back and think about the complex chilies and smokey aroma.


Final Score: 93.4

score
A-

Montezuma's ~ Venezuela Milk 43%

As I wind down the last few bars of the British Chocolate Invasion, I draw close to the end with an organic chocolate producer from London called Montezuma's. Luckily I have five bars to go through from Montezuma's.

Alas, a chocolate website after my own heart. Chock full of information. I hate it when I don't know much about a producer and have to go digging for information further than I need to go which should be the very source of the product it self. It's not about lazy blogging, but sometimes you have to read 20 pages or more of other sources just to gather up enough information for one post here.


About Montzuma's:

Ex-lawyers turned chocolate entrepreneurs, Helen and Simon Pattinson, founded Montezuma’s in 2000 hand making their chocolate with one little machine and one shop in Brighton.

"It seems incredible that just a few years ago the smell of chocolate was one of the things that made Simon and I want to abandon our careers in the law despite the fact we had spent many years studying to become well paid solicitors in a large law firm in London.

Having become totally disillusioned with London, law and all the trappings of a money dominated life, we resigned from our jobs, sold our Putney house and put all our possessions into storage, leaving for South America virtually on the next plane.

We cannot remember why South America attracted us but I think it was probably the huge diversity of climates, cultures and landscapes . . . we were not disappointed.

Read more about their story here. 

Ideals and Fair Trade:

We have founding principles that we shout about and aren’t shy to thrust into the limelight.  We call this Trading Fairly.

These principles haven’t been bolted on or constructed to join a bandwagon, and for us that means working in harmony with the environment, our partners, our customers, and of course the societies we touch. 

It’s fair to say our ideals run deeper than our pockets and always will do.   Even if you’re mad and don’t want to buy any chocolate, please, please, read some of this stuff about what we actually do and think; including why we are not always comfortable with “Fairtrade”.  Shock horror!

Our Mission

Our World

Our Trade

Only Natural Ingredients:

The difference between good, bad and ugly foods depends largely on the quality of the constituent ingredients and chocolate is certainly no exception. 

We take great pride in sourcing and using only the finest ingredients; from Dominican Republic cocoa beans we consider to be the world’s best to fine and dark Madagascan vanilla.

The only thing missing from the website is the region of Venezuela the beans come from. Just a vague description of a "Lost World" type of environment some where in Venezuela. But there is a definite answer on bean varietals using Trinitario and Criollo blends. The beans were probably sourced from the northeast coastal regions of Venezuela.

But they do make up for it with the tags for this chocolate on their website indicated extensively what is and what isn't in this product and who this product is suitable for.

Traces of nuts.
Free of Genetically Modified ingredients.
Additive & coloring free.
Soya free.
Preservative free.
Suitable for vegetarians.
Gluten free.
Contains dairy.
British made.

Venezuela Milk

Type: Milk, 43%

Bean Varietal: Trinitario and Criollo

Ingredients: Cocoa solids 43%, milk solids 19% whole milk and powder, sugar, and vanilla.

Sample Size: 100g or 3.5 oz



Appearance: Smooth and shiny bar with basic non-monogrammed molding. Virtually blemish free and gorgeous light caramel coloring.

Score: 98

Snap: Fairly good snap for a milk chocolate, but still rather dull with a low thud versus a crisp snap. Clean break lines.

Score: 92

Aroma: Butter, cream, caramel, soft roasted cocoa.

Score: 95

Taste: Sweet, huge caramel taste, lovely light roasted cocoa. Tastes like a rich hot chocolate made with milk in bar form.

Score: 96

Texture: Smooth, creamy, fast melt time.

Score: 94

This was fantastic milk chocolate. It tasted exactly the way a rich hot chocolate made with steamed milk tastes. It also had wonderful, rich caramel notes. Soft roasted cocoa aromas with a lovely roasted cocoa taste. With 43% cocoa for a milk chocolate, it's borderline on a dark-milk giving way to much richer cocoa flavors that interacted well with the milky and caramel tastes.

It was a touch sweet, but balanced by rich butter caramel flavors. It had a creamy smooth texture with long lingering cocoa and caramel flavors. But interestingly enough it finished fairly dry on the palate.

Sometimes I don't need to go into a lot of detail to explain why something tastes so good. It is what it is and I say it's great. It's as simple as that. Given what I have said about butter, caramel, creamy hot chocolate flavors, that should be enough to let you know that you should buy this product. And buy a lot of it.

Final Score: 95

score
A

British Chocolate Invasion

 

A few weeks ago, I contacted a good friend of mine named Angelo, who lives in London, to "pretty please, with sprinkles on top" bring me back a collection of chocolate from some of the shops in London. He was coming out to visit Boston for our BeerAdvocate Extreme Beer Festival. I figured it would be a great way to save myself individual ordering and shipping costs.

Well, he certainly completed the mission and now I really don't know what to do with myself. I already have about 25 bars of chocolate in a queue up for review. I can't say my life is hard. I won't allow anyone to pity me. No, don't. Do not feel bad for me.

Long chocolate Bar from CocoMaya.

 

Chocolate stiring cubes and chocolate bars from Melt.

 

Melange Chocolate flavored chocolate strips. Not even bars, but rather delicate, thin straps of chocolate.

 

Paul A. Young chocolate bars.

 


Willie's World Class Cacao chocolate bars.

 

William Curley chocolate bars.

Demarquette chocolate bars.


 

 
 



Montezuma's Organic chocolate bars.

Rococo chocolate bars.

A single bar from The Grenada Chocolate Company.

Theobroma Cacao Single Origin buttons.

And this is going in the garbage because this household supports Tottenham Hotspur!

 

Thank you Angelo, for spending a lot of pounds to keep me busy for a while! 20°N & 20°S fans thank you too!