This begins my journey with new bean-to-bar producers, Marou Faiseurs de Chocolat, in Saigon, Vietnam. Two Frenchmen, Samuel Maruta and Vincent Mourou-Rochebois, who moved to Vietnam and began producing their own bean-to-bar chocolate locally made right there from the source. Vietnam's first single origin bean-to-bar producer in the country.
I have been in close contact with Samuel via twitter discussing as of late, French cheeses, chocolate packaging, and little bit about their crazy adventures in Vietnam. It's been rather nice discussing these things. I am utterly fascinated by anyone who gives it all up to follow and pursue a dream. After all that's what we did with BeerAdvocate and now this venture which is small for now, with Chocolate Advocate. I am running into that a lot right now and running into a some great foodies and chefs from that side of the world interested in their local goods and interested in talking about it without pretencions and without ego. Genuine excitement for the work they do. It's not that people aren't discussing those things here, but it's been a while where it was only about passion and not about egos.
I thank Samuel and my new Aussie twitter pals who have been very engaging and without knowing it, encouraging me to come out of my shell more in regards to food. I consider myself an extreme amateur who is doing whatever I can to learn and read everything about chocolate. So when someone excepts me into their food folds, I feel honored. I can bring chocolate and beer to the table at least.
Thank you Samuel for sending me chocolate to review. I am always eternally grateful for samples being sent my way.
Sam and Vincent. Image via their blog.
Samuel tells me that to begin this journey I should start with this Dồng Nai 72%, the yellow label first. This bar is made with beans sourced from the Dồng Nai Provence of southern Vietnam just north of Hồ Chí Minh City.
A rare and delicate chocolate, made in small batched, from agro-forestry farms around Cat Tien National Park's Primeval Forest.
Image via Vietnam Travels.
Here is a link to their blog about briefly describing cacao history in Vietnam.
Dồng Nai 72%
Type: Bittersweet, 72%
Bean Varietal: Trinitario
Ingredients: Cocoa, cane sugar, and cocoa butter.
Sample Size: 100g
Appearance: Thick solid tablet monogrammed tablet, deep dark brown color, shiny, but the shine lost a lost of luster along the way with a lot of particle matter all over the bar.
Score: 91
Snap: Very deep, hard and firm snap, very loud snap sound, but very crumbly break lines.
Score: 92
Aroma: Roasted wood, coffee, pen ink, berries, slightly green, mildly medicinal, and some wild flower honey aromas lightly hanging on at the top of the aroma.
Score: 93
Taste: Very fruity, big wild flower honey flavors, cocoa-y, roasted char flavors, big sugars, deeply bitter, a little tart, pen ink (wood and berries), coffee with cream flavors, biscuits and cereal grains through retro-olfaction,
Score: 94
Texture: Starts off a little hard, but opens up with a good medium melt-time, it's pretty smooth but not overly silky.
Score: 92
Let's get to the bottom of this once and for all. What exactly does "pen ink" mean in my reviews? To me it's a flavor or aroma of roasted cacao that has big wood flavors and berries that sort of blend together and remind me of Bic pen ink. Surely you must have had one explode on you before and that smell and that taste (it's exploded on me for gnawing at the end of the pen) of the ink is very distinctive. It's what I think these blended berries and roasted tar and char aromas of some cacao reminds me of. When they blend together and there isn't a clear picture of what kind of berries or wood because the char is there. It's not very eloquent but then again I don't really care about that. I care about the exact memories, the flavor profiles it evokes.
This was great chocolate. There is a lot going on with the flavors. The aroma's and the flavors matched up very well too. Big fruits right off the bat, and then a surprising honey flavor, it's big with sugars but not unbalanced since this bar is very bitter. Some wood flavors and berries in the middle and some roasted cacao with char flavors. It finishes with coffee and cream notes and of course the cereal grains. It has some tartness to it, but it's really not acidic at all.
I do want to mention that the molding has everything to do with the giant snap quality of this bar. It's almost a little too hard without any definitive tablet indentations. I also didn't take it out on them too much over the particle matter all over the bar. The bar was still in great shape, no bloom, no major scratching and scuffing. But it did lend to a much more muted surface appearance. I am stickler for chocolate looking as pretty as it tastes.
Final Score: 92.4
B+
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