Wild Bar from Melt Chocolates in London. A full service chocolate shop with truffles, caramels, barks, bars, single origin hot chocolates, and seasonal offerings.
You can find Melt all over London with their shop in Nottinghill, at Lidgates, Selfridges, and at Whole Foods in Kensington.
Lovely packaging presented in a square shape and not the traditional bar shape. This bar came to me as part of the British Chocolate Invasion. With this collection also came some the 2 Bar, a Milk-Dark chocolate. Also something I specifically asked for, their single origin hot chocolate stiring cubes. I got one from Columbia and Madagascar.
The Wild Bar uses organic beans from Bolivia. As described from their website:
This will be my first experience with Bolivian beans. I like that this is an entirely wild bar with unknown bean varietals.
From their website:
Their head chocolatier is Chikako Watanabe. They work with producers such as Art Pollard of Amano, Mott Green of The Grenada Chocolate Co. and Santander, a single origin producer from Columbia.
They also work with Britain's top chefs to create special chocolate collections. Sophie Conran, Mark Hix, The river Cafe, and Skye Gyngell.
Melt Chocolates ~ Wild Bar 68%
Bean Varietal: Unknown, wild cocoa trees, probably blended hybrids.
Type: Bittersweet, 68%
Ingredients: Cocoa solids 68%, sugar, cocoa butter.
Sample Size: 90g or 3oz
Appearance: Deep, dark brown color, smooth, shiny, cool square shape with monogrammed molding.
Score: 95
Snap: Light crisp sound, but firm snap. Clean break lines.
Score: 93
Aroma: Light nose with hints of peanuts, fruity with cherries and hints of leather and a little smokey.
Score: 93
Taste: Sweet, no bitterness, slightly nutty right in the beginning, roasted cocoa, earthy, a strange spicy note that briefly makes an appearance then quickly goes away almost like a mild curry spice but it doesn't stay long enough for me to be sure, a little soapy tasting, hints of lemon, deep, dark fruits from retro-olfaction. Lingering light bitterness and roasted cocoa.
Score: 95
Texture: Smooth and soft, fast melt time.
Score: 94
The taste is a bit all over the place. The soap characteristic isn't necessarily a bad thing either, but strange in it's presence on a wild bean bar.
This was a very complicated bar for me. It has a lot of the same hallmarks of English chocolate that I have noticed from other bars. These bittersweet bars from the UK have no acidic bitterness or deep bitter cocoa bitterness, but they are very sweet instead. This isn't a bad thing but it doesn't usually leave way for a lot of complexities of the cocoa to come through. That wasn't the case with this bar. There was a lot going on here.
This is a thinking chocolate by trying to pin down these flavors bouncing all over the place. Each piece I tasted new flavors presented themselves. I really enjoyed this.
Final Score: 94
A-
You are going to make me a chocoholic! man I love the fabulous kinds you show us~ thanks for the great info on my favorite food!~
Posted by: pegasuslegend | 03/05/2010 at 07:59 PM