La deuxième ronde avec Marou, Faiseurs de Chocolat. Première dégustation avec leur barre d'origine unique à partir de Vietnam, Dong Nai 72% a été une expérience très jolie. Le Tien Giang à 70% aujourd'hui.
Samuel Maruta m'a honoré par Tweeting que mon premier examen de Dong Nai 72% étaient leur premier avis REAL. Je ne sais pas ce que mes opinions apporter à la table parfois, mais tout ce que je peux faire, c'est de rester vrai. Bonne ou mauvaise. Dong Nai a été très bonne.
Je suis amoureuse de leur emballage. Très simple et toujours très asiatique dans le thème. Elle coule très bien avec qui ces chocolatiers sont.
Blame my translator if the above is mangled in anyway.
Tiền Giang province on the Mekong Delta. Lush areas ripe for chocolate growing. It makes sense and in a way reminds of some of the delta river valleys in Madagascar. Not that I have been to compare the two. I am sure Vietnam is much hotter, and perhaps more jungle, but from what I gather the conditions seem similar.
This full bodied chocolate owes its spice and fruit notes to the organic Trinitario beans grown by farmers on the Cho Gao co-op in the Mekong Delta.
Tiền Giang 70%
Type: Bittersweet, 70%
Bean Varietal: Trinitario
Ingredients: Cacao, cane sugar, cocoa butter.
Sample Size: 100g
Appearance: Deep dark brown color, shiny surface, monogrammed custom molding, very slight scuffing and particle matter.
Score: 92
Snap: Very hard snap, too hard, loud cracking sound, crumbling break lines.
Score: 88
Aroma: Very tart and citric aroma, char with some underlying rubbery tar notes, a little medicinal, aged wood, and fruity berries. Hard to find but subtly there are some coffee grinds and very faint cinnamon aromas.
Score: 92
Taste: Bold fruits up front, floral flavors mixed in with the berries, tart and acidic, deeply bitter, nutty biscuit flavors on the finish from retro-olfaction
Score: 87
Texture: Fairly hard. Hard to bite into, hard to snap, but it doesn't take too long to open up once in the mouth. Medium melt-time, nice creamy texture once it opens up, nice smooth texture.
Score: 91
Much cleaner appearance this time. I wasn't hard on my last review with appearance realizing that these bars did come all the way from Vietnam to Michigan, and finally to Cambridge. But this bar was in much better shape.
Really hard though due to it's thickness. It has a gloriously loud, cracking snap, but it left a lot of crumbles and broke half way down the center. Needs a little bit deeper grooves in the molding for an easier snap and easier bite size pieces. This also made it a problem biting into. It melts with a nice even medium melt-time, and has a nice smooth texture, but I ended up having to snap it into bite size bits with my hands. But once it's in the mouth and the melt begins, it has very nice texture. That's what I scored it on, but I have to make a note here about biting into it. A little too thick.
It's aroma was strong and citrus-y. It had big fruits, but also big aged wood aromas that mingled with the berries and fruitiness and left a medicinal aroma as an effect of that. Some char aromas from the roasting, and some slightly inky qualities. And just barely there, I had to really inhale this aroma for a while, but there are some coffee grinds and cinnamon aromas coming off this bar. Super light though.
The flavors were much more straight forward. Big huge fruit flavors and bold berries right up front with a soft layer of floral elegance lightly hanging on top of the big fruits, good balance of sugars, but very tart and acidic. Tart but not sharp. Very bitter but sort of rounded out by the big fruit flavors of this chocolate. Very distinctive nutty biscuit flavors on the finish. Bitter lingering after taste that holds on to the palate tightly.
I wanted to rate this higher on the flavor because the nuttiness, the floral aspect, and big full fruit flavors were stellar. But there is a bit of an acidity issue and a bit of some wild bitterness that dominates the palate. The flavors were so big and bright that they could stand up to the bitterness, but eventually the palate is overtaken.
I really want to stress that these are minor issues for me personally. I liked how big and bold the flavors were. Pretty straight forward and not a lot of hard-to-find nuances. It is what is is. But in the interest of fairness for reviewing, there were some mistakes with this bar. Tame the acid and bitterness and thin out the molding a little bit.
Final Score: 90
B
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