20°N & 20°S

Claudio Corallo ~ Soft 73.5% with Nibs

 

 

 

Picked up in Brooklyn with the advice that this is extremely good good chocolate. A brewer gave me this chocolate, and once I smelled it, I now know why. More of that later when I get to the aroma.

Once again, very excited to have a website with good information about the cocoa and it's origins. A lot of cutting and pasting but definitely worth the read.

 

Claudio Corallo

Corallo spent years growing coffee in the middle of the Congo jungle, and through that experience cultivated his exceptional talent for producing agricultural excellence in the most difficult of growing conditions.

Corallo has spent nearly a decade on the tiny African island of Principe converting the abandoned Terreiro Velho plantation that once grew superb cacao into a world-class estate producing cacao unlike any other. The harvested cacao is then transported to the neighboring island of Sao Tome where it is fermented, dried and sorted, where only the finest cacao moves on to being crafted into chocolate. Through careful study and meticulous experimentation, Corallo personally developed innovative techniques that transform his cacao into unforgettable chocolate.

 

 

Origins

The first historically documented emigration of the cacao plant was to the island of Príncipe in 1822 by order of the Portuguese King Dom Joao VI.

Realising that Portugal would soon lose its immense colony of Brazil (which happened in 1822), the King sought to save part of the income that Portugal derived from the famous cacao plants of the Bahia region by transporting a good number to another of Portugal’s colonies: the peaceful São Tomé e Príncipe. It could not have been easy to keep the delicate young plants alive during the long voyage from Bahia to Príncipe, and the effort shows how important that mission was. By the 1900s this microscopic archipelago was the world’s biggest cacao producer, something not even King Dom Joao VI could have hoped for. Over the last 50 years the old varieties of cacao were replaced by modern hybrids that were more productive, as happened to coffee bushes and so many other fruits. But tiny Príncipe was forgotten and the precious original cacao somehow managed to survive there.

 

The Plantation

We found the old cacao plants on Principe Island, at Terreiro Velho plantation, scattered throughout the invading forest. They had naturally reproduced through the years -- thanks to monkeys.  With years of passionate work, we cleared the rainforest ground, replanted the shade trees that had been cut down for wood, and started seeding the original plants.

By giving them air and just the right amount of light, the old plants gained new vigour, producing healthy and abundant fruit, as if thanking us for our work. The perfume from their pulp, ever more intense and fresher, made us jump for joy.

I visited other plantations to see their fermentation process but none made me very happy. They were not transforming the perfume; in fact, it was being eliminated. Through years of testing we developed a natural fermentation method where we move from one perfume to another - just what I wanted.

Now it was time to dry all the cacao that we had worked so hard on. We had to find the exact thermal curve and the most practical way to reach it. After tests, designs and results that weren't successful, we finally got it right.   

he cacao came out of the dryers but, with the humidity in Sao Tome & Principe, we found it didn't stay dry for long. So there was no alternative but to dehumidify the warehouse and the work area. In the rainy season we have to be especially vigilant.

Once the beans are bagged, we put them onto small boats to travel the 90 ocean miles from Principe to Sao Tome.

 

So in a nut shell they restored and rebuilt an abandoned plantation in Principe, they then send the beans to Sao Tome for fermentation They tweaked and developed their own methods of fermentation.

 

Bean to bar

Some 20 hours after leaving Principe, the cacao arrives in Sao Tome and Arlindo do Espirito Santo, who is in charge of our chocolate laboratory, is the first person to jump on board before unloading.

He checks all the bags to make sure none have broken open or got wet. It is very important to do this before offloading because if even one bag got slightly wet we need to understand why and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Only after Mr. Arlindo clears the load does the offload onto the dock start.

Bags of 30 kilos each work best for us because they pass easily from hand to hand from start to finish on the journey from Terreiro Velho to our staging area on the Nova Moca plantation without ever touching the ground.

The Nova Moca team is ready to receive the beans. One by one the bags are opened, checked, re-weighed, organised by harvest date and placed in our dehumidified storage area.

At this point, with the dried cacao beans at Nova Moca, we can easily say that 60 percent of our work is done, as we already have the essentials for an extraordinary chocolate.

Before roasting, our cacao beans are selected by hand. Empty or defective beans are removed. The beans are now clean and checked. For a uniform roasting process, we make sure that beans of similar sizes are roasted together, with the same amount of heat and time, so the beans will release their best flavour.

Roasting is, without a doubt, a risky operation, because it is during this phase that the chocolate’s aroma is developed, and where even small errors in terms of time or temperature can ruin all the work done up to now. To get the best result we need the ideal thermal curve. We need to know when to interrupt the roasting, neither a second too soon nor too late because this is when the chocolate’s aromas are developed to their fullest. From 1980 to 1995 we roasted a lot of coffee in Zaire but very little cacao. We have a lengthy and well-rounded experience with a wide range of roasting machines and many species and varieties of coffee. The cacao was another matter altogether.

When you roast coffee, a color change is one of the parameters that tip you off as to timing. But with cacao, which must be roasted still covered in its integument, the colour doesn’t change, so there is no tip-off.

Throughout each roasting tests we gathered a huge amount of data regarding time and temperature. Our notes filled whole binders.

A low temperature and a long roasting time "take away happiness from the cacao". If temperatures are just a little too high or the time just a moment too short it will yield a rough flavour. Little by little we got there. At first, 95 percent of our efforts were either too short or too long. But that 5 percent that were just right led us to realize that any shortcoming was due to our own fault. Most roasted cacao tastes like nuts or burnt. Thanks to the extraordinary quality of our cacao, we gradually found that "magic second" that led us to the perfect roasting down to a fraction of a second. We finally succeeded!

Cacao beans are covered by a woody tegument. Underneath lies a small film called endosperm. Inside this endosperm there is a hard and bitter wild root.

From our chocolate nibs it might seem that the next phase is very brief, but that’s not the case. Cacao is a product that is alive, that wants to be known and cared for, and that likes to remind you of this by making you pay for even a moment’s distraction. At every different point in the refining, the taste and intensity change in a non-linear manner, with continuous and diverse sensations. Refining is another risky phase. We are now close to the 100 percent perfection that we dream of, the basis of all our chocolate, 100 percent perfection from the moment the cacao is picked off the tree until it reaches you.

 

I apologize for all the cutting and pasting, but there is a lot of good information for a novice chocolate fan. It was worth repeating. Hopefully someone out there is learning something from this blog.

 

 

73.5% with Nibs

 

Type: Bittersweet

Bean Varietal: Hybrid, wild beans

Ingredients: Cocoa, sugar, cocoa butter, 70% minimum cocoa.

Sample Size: 50g or 1.76oz

 

Appearance: Two tablets with no molding or monograms. Both tablets broken, slightly ashy, and cracked.

Score: 71

Snap: Soft, dull thud, asymmetrical break lines due to no molding,

Score: 73

Aroma: Huge aroma! Roasted cocoa, bitter, chocolate coffee stout, roasted coffee, fresh coffee grinds, burnt toast, tar.

Score: 99

Taste: Sweet, inky, tar notes, bitter, a bright green citrus hit of oranges and pine needles that seems to permeate but doesn't last long over the bitter roasted coffee flavors, cereal grains on the finish.

Score: 94

Texture: A little grainy, soft, soft nibs with a slight crunchy texture.

Score: 89

 

This one of those chocolates where the technical marks do not do it justice. The aroma on this chocolate has one of the most robust armoas I have ever smelled on a bar of chocolate. It smells like I poured a massive stout in a pint glass. A huge robust stout like Espresso Oak Aged Yeti from Great Divide. It's a wonderful smell. Huge coffee and roasted cocoa, bitter notes of burnt toast and tar, and fresh ground coffee beans. This is beer lovers chocolate right here.

The taste is quite unique as well. The same aroma flavors of coffee and roasted cocoa, but with a fantastic hit of oranges and pine needs and finished with cereal grains. It's also a lot sweeter than I would have expected. I expected all bitterness.

This is wonderful chocolate, but unfortunately it's appearance and snap quality takes it's average way down. I still encourage anyone to pick this up, cut the top off the package and just hold it to your nose and breathe away. Then taste it after you have finally come to terms with this fabulous aroma.

 

Final Score: 85.2

 

    score
     B-

 

Rabot Estate ~ 65% Dark 120 Hour & 96 Hour Conching

These chocolates came to me though my good friend Angelo from London's Borough Market, then transported to Belgium, and home with me to Cambridge, Ma.

I met up with Angelo in Belgium as part of a beer business trip. That business being my husband was getting Knighted by the Knighthood of the Brewers' Mash Staff (Belgian Brewers' Guild).

Angelo being an excellent partner in drinking, is also a main contributor to my blog. Contributor in the fact that he finds and sources all the best chocolate in London for me to write about. Also, some nice gems from Italy.

West Indies Chocolate. Where do I begin? Thankfully the Rabot Estate website is chock full of information. 

The Rabot Estate is Saint Lucia’s oldest cocoa estate, and was first established as an agricultural estate around 1745.

It was bought 5 years ago by two UK based entrepreneurs, Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris, the original founders of Hotel Chocolat . At that stage cacao growing on Saint Lucia was on its knees; no future, no investment, no pride and no quality.

Angus grew up in the Caribbean and always wanted to connect chocolate and cacao. A customer sent him an old book published in 1920 about cacao growing, which he read while he was visiting his father who lives in Barbados. This was a moment of serendipity which inspired him to get into cacao growing. Peter always wanted to have a farm, so although he is a Chartered Accountant and naturally quite cautious, he was game on too!

Since then, Angus and Peter have invested heavily, re-planting thousands of new cacao trees, raising the quality of the fermentation to get a fantastic quality bean and putting together a team of local talent led by Phil Buckley – a resourceful cacao tree hugging eco-engineer. His wife Judy is an expert on team building and quality control. They have reached out to the other cacao growers on the island to stimulate a Cocoa Renaissance as part of their Engaged Ethics programme.

There are now 80 growers who have formally joined the scheme.

They get a commitment
- all the beans they grow will be bought, giving a secure and guaranteed market
- they will be paid about 30% above world cocoa prices
- will be paid 1 week after delivery
- free technical help
- subsidised cocoa tree seedlings to plant out

Now there is a thriving cocoa growing sector and an estimated 300 new jobs have been created amongst these growers. Sustainable benefits brought about by making investments of time, money and passion. 

I really admire websites that include detailed information about their chocolate. The Rabot Estate has included some good information about the bean varietal Trinitario including some genetic confirmations.

Making Chocolate History:

Saint Lucia is home to some of the world’s most sought after, fine flavour cocoa – the Trinitario bean. It’s a natural cross between the brilliant, but difficult to grow, Criollo strain and the hardier, but less complex, Forastero. So it’s strange, but true, that the world has never before tasted chocolate made with Saint Lucia’s Trinitario cocoa – previously all St Lucian cocoa has been exported and mixed into blends.

This enterprise has enabled the taste of Saint Lucian chocolate to be tasted for the first time ever.

The rare chocolate on sale currently is from the fourth harvest of beans from Saint Lucia and includes cacao from 80 of our neighbours. The cacao arrives at Rabot Estate ‘wet’, which is to say freshly scooped from pod, so that we can ferment and dry the beans to our exact scientific specification – because that's where the true flavour profile of the bean is developed.

With each batch of chocolate improving on the last, this, our fourth cuvée is the best yet. And with each harvest, our experience and knowledge of how to get the best out of these fine flavour beans grows. This year the beans have been subjected to a lower temperature roast, for a slightly longer time, which has preserved more of the multi-layered flavours and resulted in something milder and more sophisticated in nature.

The recipes, as always, contains no vanilla, allowing the true flavour notes to come through unimpeded.

Finding Dr. Pound's Lost Cacao:

In 1727 something catastrophic hit the island of Trinidad that changed the complexion of cocoa forever… THE BLAST

Some say it was a hurricane, others suggest it might have been drought or disease. Whichever way you look at it however, the “blast” that hit the West Indian island of Trinidad in the 18th century all but destroyed the island’s cocoa industry, one of the world’s largest at that time.

It was the Spanish who first brought cocoa to Trinidad around about 1525 and they brought with them the fine flavour Criollo trees. But it wasn’t until the beginning of the 18th century that Trinidad’s cocoa industry really took off – thanks to the French who colonised the island after the Spanish. So when the “blast” hit, it devastated the fledgling industry.

In 1757, efforts to rebuild the industry began in earnest with Forastero trees imported from nearby Venezuela – known for their resistance to disease. The new trees then interbred with the remaining Criollo trees and formed a brand new strain of cocoa, which was called Trinitario. The new strain combined the best of both parents – the hardiness of Forastero and the fine flavour of Criollo.

The Science Bit:

The hybrids quickly multiplied and formed the basis of most of the estates that needed replanting. After that, there was no looking back and over the next 150 years cacao came to dominate the Trinidadian economy. The vast array of trees in Trinidad contained just about every combination of characteristics known to cocoa, so it was no surprise that they attracted a world famous expert from Imperial College, FJ Pound.

His thorough studies over a period of years culminated in his identification of 100 different strains of Trinitario tree, selected for high yield and good quality beans. They were called the Imperial College Selections (ICS) and were numbered from 1 to 100. The next step was to carry out field trials at the San Juan Estate in Trinidad to further refine the selections – it became the most successful cocoa breeding programme in the world.

However, by 2001 only 57 of the original 100 ICS clones remained…

The Rabot Gene Bank:

We now travel north up the West Indian island chain, as Trinitario cocoa trees must also have done, passing Grenada and St Vincent and arriving at St Lucia. Here, on the Rabot Estate, we’ve been conducting our own studies into the cocoa found on our plantation. With the help of a UK university, world experts in cocoa genetics, we’ve managed to identify many of the types of cocoa growing on the estate, but there’s one in particular that has got us very excited and not only because we’ve just seen the first pod produced by the cloned trees that we have planted out.

They confirmed that they are definitely Trinitario, however, there is no exact match with any of the survivors from the original ICS clones. But they do share some ancestors, so they could well be part of the lost ICS 100 selected by FJ Pound.

A rare breed indeed...

Furthermore, it’s known that Dr Pound collected some upper Amazonian trees and later produced some more hybrids using the ICS strains. So our trees could also be part of this lost Pound selection. The university believes that, eventually, they can be fully identified. But from where ever they have been lost, they have now been found on the Rabot Estate and it seems that they are very rare. We can’t wait until more trees bear pods so that we can make the very first chocolate from these exceptional beans.

My apologies for all the cutting and pasting. I love websites that detail their information. I also wanted to be sure everyone read it versus just putting the links up.

There was a third bar to be reviewed, but while hanging out at the Moeder Lambic in Brussels, the gang of rabid drunks I was sitting with demanded we try one on the spot.

All I can say about this poor soul, was that it was delicious. My palate however was properly shot from drinking hop bombs all night like the freshest De Ranke XX, I have ever had.

This beer with all of it's fresh and floral hops no doubt was the reason I tasted unripened mangoes on the chocolate. But the rich nutty characters as well as leather and rich tobacco would not be overshadowed by my hoppy mouth.

Conching (in a nut shell) is a process in which cacao beans are broken down in to finer particles releasing more aromas and flavors or softening acidic qualities from fermentation. These are two examples of a 65% dark cacao conched at different times. 

** I do want to note that I am scoring the appearance of these bars slightly different than normal do to all the travel circumstances. These bars were packed in a way not meant for world traveling. They held up pretty good none the less.

 

 

65% Dark 120 Hour Conching

Type: Bittersweet, 65%

Bean Varietal: Trinitario, Hybrids

Ingredients: Cocoa solids (minimum 65%, sugar, soy lecithin.

Sample Size: 35g or 1.23oz

Lot #: 10137

Appearance: This bar held up well for being taken from London, to Brussels, to Boston. It did suffer a major break in the bar, but the overall appearance was nice, not nicked up, smooth and shiny except near the major break line. Monogrammed molding with intricate pattern, but no molding lines leaving for asymmetrical break lines.

Score: 91

Snap: Lightly firm, but barely audible snap. Clean, but asymmetrical break lines.

Score: 88

Aroma: Bright acidic nose, tart and citric, nutty, roasted cacao, and then a strange flowery powdered sugar nose. Like cotton candy and the remnants of a once flowery perfume sprayed on a testing paper days ago still holding on for dear life. Very faint though. Very interesting.

Score: 93

Taste: Sweet, and very sugary right up front, deep berries, dried fruits, roasted cacao flavors, nice woody characters, tiny hidden hints of bananas, lingering bitterness once all the sugar goes away.

Score: 89

Texture: Very smooth and soft, lightly creamy, medium-fast melt time.

Score: 94

I was hoping for a lot more with this chocolate, but sadly it was overly sugary which really took away a lot of potential for this bar. Any flavor that presents itself makes a quick appearance and then quickly dissipates. It's a shame because I really wish those fantastic, deep, woody characters would have stuck around.

Conching for 120 hours seems like a good a idea, but not if you conch all the flavor right out of your bar and you make up for it by overloading it with sugar. For all the information they give you about how rare these Trinitario beans are, you would think they would want you to actually taste them.

However, those with a super sweet tooth will really dig this chocolate bar. This is not for chocolate purists, but more for those who want to crush a hankering something really sweet.

Final Score: 91

score
B+

 

  

65% Dark 96 Hour Conching

Type: Bittersweet, 65%

Bean Varietal: Trinitario, Hybrids

Ingredients: Cocoa Mass (minimum 65%), sugar, soy lecithin.

Sample Size: 35g or 1.23oz

Lot #: 10188

Appearance: Slightly more banged up than the other bar and the same big crack at the bottom. Still shiny none the less despite the nicks and marks on the bar. Intricate molding with no lined patterns.

Score: 90

Snap: Slightly more firm than the 120. Better snap sound, but still fairly subdued. Asymmetrical break lines, but clean.

Score: 91

Aroma: Much softer nose, green, flowery, roasted cacao, subdued berries, mildly inky, very, very slight hints of cinnamon.

Score: 92

Taste: A lot less sugary than the 120, slight pop of acidic notes, but quickly leaves the palate, lighter wood character, bigger dried fig and raisin taste, finishes a lot more mellow than I would have expected.

Score: 93

Texture: Very smooth and silky, medium melt time.

Score: 93

Once again, I expected more from this chocolate. It's fairly tame, although the figs and dried fruits presented themselves more significantly. But the woody characters were muffled. They come out for a quick pop, but then went away quickly. There is a slight acidic taste right up front with this chocolate, but that too goes away quickly. I didn't have time to recognize if it was grapefruit like their packaging suggests you might taste.

I liked this bar better, but only marginally. Flavor wise it was much better and far less sugary than the 120.

I liked the stark contrast in the aroma's between this and the 120, and there is a fairly significant difference in taste, but I was hoping for bigger contrasts. Enough that makes sense on why they would do a 120 and a 96 hour conching.

It could be that these conching times make sense when tasting the chocolate right then and there. But allowing it to sit in weak packaging may have lost some of the intended flavors.

Final Score: 91.8

score
B+

So what happened to this chocolate? It could be a few things. There might be an over emphasis on just how good or rare these beans are from St. Lucia. There is a gimmick for new islands, new locations, new origins. Despite there being a long history with St. Lucia and cacao, there isn't a whole lot of products with these island beans. There may be an attempt to make this sound more exotic or more fantastic than it really is. Like emphasizing long conching times.

Or the extended conching really is a wonderful tactic, but the flavors are so delicate or the intended effect doesn't have longevity.

Not that this isn't good chocolate. It's fairly solid, but perhaps some more skills and less gimmick is required to make these cocoa beans really shine.

Patric Chocolate ~ Madagascar 75%

Patric Chocolate Sambirano Valley Madagascar 75%

Madagascar cacao sweetened only with pure cane sugar and no other added ingredients. Pure and simple.

[Image via Nasa, and Madagascar VTT Trekking.]

Images of the Sambirano river delta from space. And images of the valley and cocoa drying from the Sakalava Village. These images are unrelated to Patric Chocolate, but this is what the region looks like.

 



Type: Bittersweet, 75%

Bean Varietal: Hybrid

Ingredients: Cocoa beans and pure cane sugar.

Lot #: 101833

Appearance: Smooth, shiny, simple monogrammed molding. Very deep brown color.

Score: 95

Snap: Good firm, deep snap. Asymmetrical break lines, but clean.

Score: 94

Aroma: Roasted cocoa, cedar wood. bright and citric, but a lot more subdued than the other Madagascar bars from Patric. Very mild overall.

Score: 93

Taste: Tart, notes of dried tart cherries at the beginning, very citrus forward, acidic, once it's opened up a bit big cedar wood, vodka notes, roasted cocoa, tiny hints or tar and rubber but very slight. Dry, bitter retro-olfaction finish.

Score: 91

Texture: Smooth, soft and creamy, medium melt time.

Score: 94

This wasn't my favorite from Patric Chocolate, but still a fantastic chocolate over all. I personally found it to be too tart and acidic over all but still this bar had some fantastic notes like tart cherries right up front, and awesome cedar wood flavors. I have really come to appreciate and love the woody characters. I am still in total awe as to what is in the terroir that has the ability to give cocoa beans vodka notes.

It is incredibly smooth without using cocoa butter. It has a fantastic creamy texture once it's opened up and melts beautifully. Alan McClure is a master at taming raw cocoa with little or no additives.

Final Score: 93.4

score
A-

Demarquette ~ Porcelana 64%

Demarquette

Single estate cacao from Palmira Estate in Venezuela. Though it doesn't say it is Valrhona Cocoa for this bar, the same details provided for this chocolate are the same for Valrhona's Palmira chocolate bar. This must be couverture chocolate from Valrhona.

Close to lake Maracaibo, a host of villages cling to the fertile land of West Venezuela with its extraordinary variety of flora and fauna. Amidst the fruity scent of mangoes, papayas and plantain bananas, men work the plantation to harvest the best Criollo cocoa beans in Venezuela. Subtle on the palate, a round taste with notes of honey and nuts, *this chocolate has all the characteristics required to make it exceptional.

*The note inside the Demarquette bar cut off after honey and nuts.

The Lake Maracaibo area of Venezuela.

[Image via Wikimedia Commons.]

From The Nibble Chocolate Glossary about Porcelana Beans:

Image via Time Magazine.

One of the rarest beans in the world, a genetically pure strain of the Criollo bean from the Andean region of Venezuela. It is named Porcelana for the pale, almost white-colored interior of the beans (although the nibs produce regular-colored cacao). It is believed that Porcelana cocoa was grown in the southwestern area of Venezuela as early as Pre-Colombian times. According to historical sources, it seems that at the time of the Spanish conquest (the early 1500s), this cacao was being grown in the same area where Porcelana grows today.

In colonial times, Porcelana cacao was called Maracaibo, since it was primarily exported from the Venezuelan port of that name. Until the 1920s, Maracaibo cacao was classified as the world's highest-quality cacaos, along with a few Mexican and Columbian strains. Unfortunately, Porcelana cocoa is not very resistant to disease and the Mexican and Colombian cacaos of this genetic quality have died out leaving behind hybrids with inferior organoleptic qualities. The unmistakable toasted almond flavor of the pure Venezuelan variety makes it a prized bean, and this rare bean produces some of the finest (and most expensive) chocolate bars in the world. Because of the limited supply o beans only the finest chocolatiers have access and thus make a Porcelana bar: Amedei, Domori, Pierre Marcolini, and Valrhona.

Flavors will vary by producer, but in addition to almonds, Porcelana typically yields strawberries, cream, butter, butterscotch and sometimes bread flavors. The bars tend to be a reddish-brown in color.

Porcelana 64%


Type: Semisweet, 64%

Bean Varietal: Hybrid Criollo

Ingredients: Not listed, but Valrhona lists it's ingredients as: Cocoa beans, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, and soya lecithin.

Sample Size: 75g or 2.6oz



Appearance: Soft brown color smooth, shiny bar, but a little dusty and a little matted from plastic cover.

Score: 90

Snap: Excellent firm snap, crisp snap sound, clean break lines.

Score: 97

Aroma: Mildly smokey, soft, roasted cocoa, a little spicy, tangerines and orange blossoms, honey, and wood.

Score: 98

Taste: Big honey taste right up front, sweet, cereal grains, mild hints of peanuts, soft bitterness, slightly tangy, floral hints, lingering hints of peanuts and wood notes.

Score: 95

Texture: Smooth, soft and creamy once it opens up, medium melt time.

Score: 94


This was very delicate chocolate, but fantastic. Very soft, but distinctive aroma and flavors. Sweet chocolate, but not like a typical semisweet chocolate. Big honey right up front on the taste, and then opened up in to a cereal grain taste. Think Honey-Nut Cheerios. A little tangy, but overall very smooth and creamy.

The aroma was fantastic. So much going on. As soon as I opened it, it was smokey and sweet smelling. Then came a little spiciness and soft roasted cocoa notes. Orange blossom and tangerine aromas were the most surprising. They come and go on this chocolate. It was very apparent when first opened and then little hints of hit came through every now and again while reviewing.


Final Score: 94.8

score
A

Demarquette ~ Pure Wild Chocolate 72% Limited Edition

Pure, wild grown Bolivian cocoa beans. I have only encountered this one other time with the wild Bolivian beans from Melt Chocolates also in London.

This is a limited edition chocolate bar from Demarquette. I guess it was part of an exclusive batch only made for the UK. Luckily I have a friend who lives in London, and has no problem picking up chocolate for me to review.

There is no information for this chocolate bar that I can find online. A few mentions of the 68% Wild Bolivian from Demarquette. All that I have learned about Bolivian beans so far, is that appararently cocoa grows wild in Bolivia, and that they are wild hybrid beans.

Normally I am stickler about having all the information, but these wild bars are kind of cool without information. It's one of the few times I will be fairly lenient about not having the info. Wild beans from Bolivia, and nothing to do but taste it.

Pure Wild Chocolate 72% Limited Edition

Type: Bittersweet, 72%

Bean Varietal: Unknown, Wild Hybrid

Ingredients: Not Listed

Sample Size: 75g or 2.6oz

Appearance: Smooth, deep rich brown color, shiny surface, a little matted from being wrapped in plastic, but otherwise smooth.

Score: 93

Snap: Good crisp snap, light crisp sound, clean break lines.

Score: 93

Aroma: Awesome aroma, sweet, soft, woody, spicy, Almond Joy (almonds and coconuts), smokey. Once it's been opened up a bit that Almond Joy character softens into an almond butter aroma. Very nutty but soft and pretty. The nose was very aromatic but pretty with soft, delicate notes. It was a bit all over the place too with the wood and spiciness and then softening up into an almond butter. It does have soft roasted cocoa notes once it's been rubbed to open up it's aroma.

Score: 97

Taste: Rich roasted cocoa, sweet, soft, cinnamon, extremely low acidity, but fairly bitter, woody, nutty, dry, a little spicy, some hints of green fruits, but red fruits are dominating. Finishes clean, but has some lingering hints of nuts.

Score: 95

Texture: Smooth, soft, creamy, medium melt time.

Score: 94

I loved the aroma on this chocolate. It was all over the place with being spicy and nutty. It was sweet smelling and sweet tasting but still fairly bitter and finished dry. Unusual chocolate, but certainly exciting trying to figure out all of it's nuances. 

This was a very interesting bar of chocolate. I should develop a category for "Thinking man's chocolate." I have a few of these come up where I had to sit back for a while and think about these chocolate. This was one of them.

Final Score: 94.4

score
A-

Patric Chocolate ~ Rio Caribe Superior 70%

Patric Chocolates

Another straight forward chocolate from the Paria Peninsula in Venezuela. See the map below and locate Rio Caribe on the top right hand side. That is the Paria Peninsula and the region this chocolate comes from.

From the website:

This single-estate chocolate, made with delectable cacao from Venezuela's Paria Peninsula, has robust and deeply satisfying chocolate flavor with notes of fresh cream, roasted almonds, coffee, walnuts, floral notes and subtle hints of dried apricot. This bar is the equal of and yet completely different than our Madagascar line of bars.

This chocolate was sent to me as part of a collection of Patric Chocolates from Alan McClure. This is his first single origin bar outside of Madagascar. He first released it in late 2009. He has 4 other bars all from Madagascar of various strengths. He is working on another single origin bar soon to be released, but he is very tight lipped about any clues on where it might be coming from.

Won't you give us any sort of a hint Alan?

Upon opening this chocolate, it immediately reminded me of smelling a Gueuze or sour, wild ales. Sometimes the aroma characteristics described may not sound like they are very appealing. With Sour ales it's not uncommon to have an aroma of band aids, medicinal aromas, or barnyard smells. Funky is the key word for these kinds of beers and I think funky is a good key word for the aroma of this chocolate.

This is all bean on the aroma. There are nothing but cocoa beans and sugar in the ingredients. No cocoa butter, or vanilla added. This is some pretty raw chocolate.

I felt like I should explain the aroma ahead of time because it might not seem palatable for some readers. And with some of these funkier aromas, it might not make sense why this chocolate scored as high as it did. It's because of how natural it is and how distinctive these aromas were. Not to mention, it technically hits all the right marks for reviewing. It's a thinking chocolate and not what I would call a beginners chocolate.

Rio Caribe Superior 70%

Type: Bittersweet, 70%

Bean Varital: Hybrid, Trinitario

Ingredients: Cocoa beans and sugar.

Sample Size: 50g or 1.75 oz

Lot #: 101830

Appearance: Smooth, shiny, glossy, simple monogrammed molding. Deep, rich, dark brown color.

Score: 97

Snap: Good firm, crisp snap, though a touch lighter in sound than I would have though. Clean break lines.

Score: 94

Aroma: Huge roasted cocoa, bitter, strongly medicinal, minty, rubber, tar, burnt coffee, slightly minty, some complex fruits and apricots underneath the robust roasted characters.

Score: 92

Taste: Sugar in the very first taste, then it opens up into medicinal flavors, burnt coffee, tar, rubber, roasted cocoa, cinnamon, oak.

Score: 94

Texture: Soft, smooth, creamy, medium melt time.

Score: 95

This is very complex chocolate. It's very robust and bitter, but has strong individual flavors. It's like each individual flavor is an attention getter vying for your time and attention amongst the other flavors. There are fruits, but they are hard to identify with all the other strong flavors coming through. There were apricots on the nose, but hard to pinpoint on the taste.

This is a great chocolate for those who like things complicated and bitter. It's very natural and untamed like those funky wild ales I was talking about earlier.

I am not even sure if I really like this chocolate, I think I just like how raw and aggressive it is.  This is not a beginners chocolate.

Final Score: 94.4

score
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