An organic chocolate bar from The Grenada Chocolate Co. coming to me once again as part of the British Chocolate Invasion.
As previously mentioned with the review Melt's Wild Bar, they work with Mott Green and the Grenada Chocolate co. as one of the sources for their cocoa.
This is a quick but excellent video about The Grenada Chocolate Co.
Radical Chocolate by Eti Peleg.
From their website:
Our award-winning organic dark chocolate has the wonderful complex flavor of Grenada's fine-flavored organic cocoa beans, processed carefully in small batches. Producing chocolate right where the cocoa grows allows us to do our own fermenting which gives us a real advantage in creating the finest, most complex taste from the beans. We use our own extracted cocoa butter in our chocolate also from Grenada's fine-flavored cocoa. This brings in a luxurious extra richness and chocolaty flavor. Our chocolate has a truly deep and rich flavor.
We now have over 150 acres of organic cocoa farms in our cooperative and operate our own cocoa fermentry, located one mile from our little factory. This assures that we perform every activity involved in the production of our chocolate, from the planting and growing of the cocoa trees to the fermenting of the fresh cocoa beans to the processing of our fine dark chocolate. We grow our cocoa totally naturally without the use of any chemical pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers and have been Certified Organic.
Our sugar is a fine organic raw sugar produced and milled by an organic growers' cooperative in Paraguy.
Whole organic vanilla beans grown biodynamically in Costa Rica provide our "dash" of vanilla.
Organic soy lecithin is used as emulsifier in extremely small amounts.
We are one of the only small-scale chocolate-makers producing fine chocolate where the cocoa grows. Because small batch chocolate-making is very rare, we had to create our own processing methods, desigining our own machines and refurbishing antique equipment to meet the requirements of our unique situation. Most of our machines are based in design on those of the early 1900's, a time when quality had precedence over quantity in chocolate-making. Because we care about our environment, we use solar-electric energy to power our machines.
The original impetus and principle of our cooperative company is to revolutionize the cocoa-chocolate system that typically keeps cocoa production separate from chocolate-making and therefore takes advantage of cocoa farmers.We believe that the cocoa farmers should benefit as much as the chocolate-makers.
They also detail their process of bean-to-bar from start to finish with their antique and custom machinery.
Virtual Tour
Type: Bittersweet 71%
Bean Varietal: Trinitario
Ingredients: Organic cocoa beans, organic cane sugar, organic cocoa butter, organic soya lecithin, organic vanilla beans. *Organic cocoa solids 71% min.
Sample Size: 3oz or 85g
Appearance: Smooth, shiny, deep dark brown color, simple molding.Couple of air bubbles throughout the top of the bar.
Score: 93
Snap: Good firm snap, deep snap sound, clean break lines.
Score: 96
Aroma: Nutty, peppery, dry wood, muted fruits, smokey tobacco, and light hints of tar, very slight floral hints.
Score: 94
Taste: Deep, rich, roasted cocoa, very bold flavors, very bitter, but not acidic, bark, wood, big bright green bananas, papayas, bitter lemon twist (peel) earthy. Very complex.
Score: 96
Texture: Smooth, hard, slow melt time.
Score: 92
Thinking mans chocolate. This is very deep, bold, and complex. Most of the flavors were very apparent, but the green notes were hard to identify at first. I keep saying to my husband, "there is something green on this what is it?" He got more of the bitter lemon twist, and I was thinking the green was more like papayas and green unripened bananas. We both agreed on the wood and bark notes and earthiness.
This is fantastic chocolate. This would be great to give to a chocolate expert in a blind tasting just to watch them mull it over. I personally had to take several bites of it just to think about the taste.
Final Score: 94.2
A-
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