ZOMG, Candy!

After I noted TCHO’s off packaging, they sent me fresh samples with their new packaging. In the months since my roommate bought the pack that I first tasted, TCHO had switched from an inner paper liner (which probably contributed the nasty paper flavor) to an inner foil liner.

It seems like they’ve also reformulated the chocolate a tad as well. This time, only the Chocolatey was 70%. Citrus was 67%, Nutty was 65%, and Fruity 2.0 was 68%. The latter three are made from organic beans, and “Nutty” and “Fruity 2.0″ are fair trade as well.

The etchings on the mold have changed too - I much prefer the current line graph markings.

“Citrus” tasted dusky at first, then became brightly sweet and fruity/citrusy. It totally hit its mark.

“Fruity 2.0″ had a darker sweetness to it. It tasted of cherries and strawberries and carried a brightly fruity finish. There was no duskiness, and the bar had a thin melt.

“Chocolatey” was by far my favorite. It was initially sweet, then gave way to a strong nuttiness with a fruity undertone. It had a thicker melt and mouthfeel than the other bars.

Nutty had a darker nuttiness than the Chocolatey did - more reminiscent of hazelnuts, I think. It had a strong, jammy sweetness that lingered in the finish.

I greatly enjoyed this set of TCHO bars. A little packaging change made a huge difference! I’m impressed at how well the bars hit their flavor marks. These would be great bars to use for a chocolate tasting party. They’re all similar percentages, yet their flavor profiles are distinct and easily discernible. Chocolatey gets an OMG, while the others get OM.

TCHO chocolates have long been on my radar. I finally got to try them when my roommates were kind enough to bring me a variety pack from California. The variety pack contained 2 each of their fruity, chocolatey, nutty, and citrus flavors.

All of the squares were about 5 centimeters across the diagonal and quite thin, just half a centimeter. All were comprised of 70% cacao.

“Fruity” was made with organic and fair trade beans from Peru. It had a sharp snap with a very dry mouthfeel. There was a definite red fruit fruitiness to it, but the overall flavor was dominated by the stale taste of paper/cardboard.

At first I thought I just had an off square - I had unwrapped it to take photos and then rewrapped it for later -  but that cardboard taste pervaded the other, not-unwrapped-until-tasting-time squares.

“Chocolatey” (beans from Ghana) smelled duskier and featured strong cocoa notes and an almost savory tinge. Its mouthfeel is also dry, but it’s a bit smoother/creamier once it starts melting. The paper/cardboard taste is present in the finish.

“Nutty”, made from organic and fair trade beans from Peru, was the softest and creamiest of the bunch, and it did carry a distinctly nutty favor. But that paper tinge is still there.

Finally, “Citrus” (organic beans from Madagascar) smells sweet and has a very dry and crumbly melt. It tastes a bit chalky with a sweet bright finish, and again that infuriating, ruinous tinge of paper/cardboard taste.

I think TCHO needs to rethink their packaging on these bars, as they all took on an unpleasant, papery overtone that ruined the taste experience. I’ve had them sitting around for a few months, but bars should keep for at least that long, especially when you’re selling them in 90-day supplies.

I’m torn on how to rate these. The paper taste warrants a –, but that doesn’t seem quite fair, as TCHO didn’t mean for them to taste of paper. Then again, they did choose the packaging and neglected to put a “best by” date on the package or any storage guidelines (that I could find) on their website. So the – stands, with the caveat that my supply was off.

After I fell in love with Aequare’s 55% bar, how would their (free sample) 70% bar fare? Let’s find out, shall we?

Like the 55% (and all of Aequare’s bars), this bar is handmade from single-origin beans. Like all the bars currently for sale, it’s from their Quevedo, Ecuador grower’s summer 2008 harvest.

The 70% bar was wonderfully snappy. It had a luxuriously thick and smooth melt, surprising for a bar with such a high cacao percentage.

There’s a slight sweetness to the bar, but it is mostly dominated by strong, dry cocoa notes with hints of coffee. It’s extremely chocolatey, in a complex way.

I didn’t love the 70% as much as the 55% - the complexity just wasn’t as captivating - but I still greatly enjoyed it. An OM.

In addition to some delicious dark chocolate cocoa beans, Aequare also sent me an assortment of their handmade single-origin bars for free sampling. Today’s review is of their 55% semi-sweet.

According to their website, the beans that went into this bar came from Aequare’s grower in Quevedo, Ecuador and their summer 2008 harvest. How’s that for precise! I can’t remember if that was stamped on the box or not, but I think it should be. It would be a neat marketing gimmick.

The chocolate bar itself is nicely presegmented into tasting-sized squares. There’s a nice snappiness when the bar is broken apart. The color is a lovely medium brown with a nice, smooth sheen, and while the melt isn’t thick, it is silky soft with just a bit of tongue-coating-ness in the finish.

Flavorwise, it’s brightly sweet with great complexity. There’s a bold fruitiness that lingers in the finish, which also has just a hint of bitter/astringent cocoa notes.

It’s absolutely lovely, thanks to its pleasant texture and intriguing complexity. It blows every other bittersweet/semisweet chocolate that I’ve had in this cacao percentage-range out of the water. A ZOMG!

I recently received a generous box of free samples from Aequare Chocolates, a newcomer to the fine artisan chocolates field - they debuted just this past summer. Included in the box were their Dark Chocolate Cocoa Beans.

According to the bag, these are “lightly roasted and peeled cocoa beans enveloped in Aequare dark chocolate.” There’s a much longer description on their product page, where you learn that the beans are single-origin, hand roasted and hand peeled, and panned in several coats of Aequare’s 70% dark chocolate.

I love how, in the above close-up, they could just as easily be a bunch of potatoes. The one on the far right even has eyes!

The beans are heftily-sized and much larger than I expected them to be, probably because I was using chocolate-covered espresso beans as my mental reference point. I’d guess that the chocolate-covered cocoa beans are between 2 to 4 times the size of chocolate-covered espresso beans.

Each bean has a generously thick layer of chocolate coating that crumbles and melts in the mouth with no thickness. The chocolate carries dry cocoa notes with a slightly sweet finish.

The beans inside add a dry crunch and grittiness. They taste even more deeply of genuine, pure cocoa flavor and release a winey fruitiness when crunched.

Aequare has managed to produce a complex, intriguing, and deliciously poppable snack. They’re so addictive that I could eat several in one session, yet so intense that it was satisfying to stop after a handful. I was able to spread the bag out over several sessions. I give them an OM.

And bonus kudos for Aequare’s excellent blog post documenting the Dark Chocolate Cocoa Bean making process.

Here’s the second of my two Vere bars (remember, they were buy one get one free), Vere Raspberry + Lemon.

Like its Mint + Nibs counterpart, the Raspberry + Lemon is an organic, single origin bar. It takes the cacao content up a notch, to 75%, and I found that difference hugely apparent. The snap of this bar is super hard - it almost hurt my teeth. It was so snappy as to be unpleasant to bite into.

The scent was dark and chalky with just a hint of citrus sourness. Upon tasting, if you survived biting into it, you’d find a dry melt and a bar that tasted of powdered dark cocoa with a lightly sweet and tart fruity finish. I could taste the raspberry and lemon, though I’m not sure that I would’ve been able to identify the specific fruits in a blind tasting.

While the Mint + Nibs bar was studded with bits of cacao nibs, the Raspberry + Lemon bar was full of raspberry seeds. That I greatly appreciated, which is surprising, considering my profound distaste for seedy raspberry candies. It may have been my imagination, but I felt as though I got a bonus burst of sweet raspberry flavor from grinding up those seeds.

All in all, the fruit flavor was decent, but the chocolate was lacking. And the bar was way too hard to eat. This bar would greatly benefit from a reformulation to make it softer. An O.

I bought this Vere Mint + Nibs bar at my local food co-op. They were buy one, get one free, and I’m never one to turn down a chocolate deal! If you’re curious, the other Vere that I chose was a Raspberry + Lemon one. It’s currently languishing, unopened, in my chocolate stash, though I presume that it will be consumed and reviewed in due course.

I’m going to purposefully ignore mentioning how the mark over the “e” in Vere affects how one would pronounce the name. Because honestly, is that really necessary, Vere?

I will point out that the bar is certified organic, and it’s single origin. Also, the blurb on the back of the box suggests that it’s at least fair trade in spirit, if not in certification, so that’s plenty enough hip points there to not need silly naming gimmicks.

The Mint + Nibs (I will concede it the use of “+” instead of “and” but refuse to use all lowercase letters) smells strongly of mint oil (as opposed to fresh mint) and dry cocoa. I love the presentation - little bite sized pillows of shiny dark chocolate etched with uniform squiggles.

The melt is pretty dry, which is unsurprising, as it’s a fairly high 70% cacao. The nibs give it a gritty crunch. The bar’s pleasantly intriguing texture makes this fun to chew. I find it best appreciated through chomping rather than melt-on-the-tonguing.

The chocolate is lightly sweet and fruity, with a light undertone of mint oil. There’s just the barest hint of effervescent refreshing mint finish. As previously mentioned, the plentiful nibs do wonders for the texture, but they don’t add much to the flavor.

All in all, it’s a great bar for snacking but not complex or inspiring enough for slow savoring. An OM.

I threw a chocolate tasting party ages ago and have been sitting on these tasting notes since then. Today, some quick hits for the last Friday (alas!) of my spring break. Part II will come Monday, when I’m back (boo!) in class.

Ghirardelli Duet, from their new line of Luxe Milk chocolates, pairs “creamy milk chocolate” with “rich dark chocolate”. It’s divided along it’s heighth axis so that it looks like a milk chocolate bar with a thin dark chocolate backing.

It had a woodsy smell with some tobacco notes to it. I found it surprisingly smoky. Its thick and creamy melt combined with its complex flavor earned it high praise at my party and from me. An OMG.

Lindt Madagascar is a single-origin 65% dark chocolate bar from their Excellence line. It has a cool melt with a fatty feel to it. The finish was quite enjoyably fruity. Another party favorite; another OMG.

The Cafe Tasse 77% was a holiday gift from my friend Steve. It’s a higher cacao percentage than the 60% noir bar I previously reviewed. It had a sharp snap and was unusually thick - in this case, a reference to its physical dimensions, not its melt - with an arid finish. An O.

More quick hits to come on Monday. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to eke out one last weekend of fun in Albany as our men’s hockey team takes on the ECAC championship playoffs.

Waaay back in 2008, I reviewed Amano’s then complete line-up of single-origin bars and gave them an enthusiastic ZOMG! They’ve since released a new Jembrana bar and updated their packaging with a shinier, artsier look. I was pleasantly surprised with a free pair of their newest bars for tasting. Apparently they’d kept my name and address on file from the last time I reviewed their bars, and boy was I glad that they did.

The press release claims as follows: “Amano Artisan Chocolate introduces a new, limited edition chocolate bar from Jembrana on the southwest coast of Bali. Like Amano’s other single origin chocolate bars, the Jembrana is made by hand, from bean to bar, in small batches with 70% cocoa… The Jembrana Single Origin Bar ($7.00/2oz) has a beautiful, rich chocolate flavor with nice fruit notes that are also a little nutty. The bar is rich and gentle at the same time, without any harshness or astringency.”

At it’s suggested retail price, Amano bars are pricey, but very few chocolate makers in the U.S. actually make their own chocolate, starting from cocoa bean scratch, and their bars are a tasting revelation. I took my tasting notes before I read the back of the box or the press release so as not to be influenced by their descriptions.

The chocolate was super smooth and creamy on the tongue but not in the thick way that milk chocolate melts. There were no dairy notes whatsoever. Instead, I got a rich chocolate with a hint of fruitiness in the finish, which was quite lovely and lingered just long enough. When I revisted the bar, I got more of an almond nuttiness in addition to that fruitiness. For those of you are wary of dark chocolate, I didn’t find the bar at all bitter, though I am a self-professed dark chocolate lover.

Altogether an excellent bar with a great flavor profile. I give it an OMG, as I think I lost some of the enjoyment in tasting it on its own without contrasting chocolates to truly highlight its flavor profile. And, if I remember correctly, I enjoyed the Cuyagua more. Still, a great bar. I have one left at school that I intend to share with friends, to spread the fancy chocolate tasting gospel. Save your pennies, and instead of buying seven Hershey’s bars, get this instead.

Now that I’m living off campus, I’m no longer on a meal plan, which means I buy my own groceries and, presumably, cook for myself. Because I’m a po’ college student, shopping for my own food has meant buying extra when things are on sale, clipping coupons, and getting acquainted with store brand products (many of whom are secretly identical or virtually to name brand things; much of the savings comes from not spending heavily on advertising) to save money. When I spent last summer in England, all that was doubly true since everything there costs twice as much. And so, without further ado, I present to you part I of a round-up of Sainsbury’s brand chocolates. Today, we Taste the Difference.

Sao Tome

I was tickled to find that Sainbury’s store brand was hoity-toity enough to jump on the single-origin bandwagon. It’s the only generic single-origin bar I’ve seen so far. I also appreciated the pretty appearance of the bar, which was scored into sections for easy portioning and stamped with a pretty fleur-de-lis design offset by diagonal etches.

In addition to its pretty design, the chocolate itself was lovely to look at, with an admirable sheen and color. At 72% cacao, this bar had the expected sharp snap. It’s flavor profile was on the sweet side for a dark bar, and it had a sour/sweet finish, somewhat reminiscent of cherries.

Belgian Dark

In my mind, Belgium is famous for a few things: sabots (wooden clogs; in introductory French, we sang a song about them, the only line of which I can still remember is “avec mes sabots” and which is now on lopp in my head), getting trampled in WWII, and chocolate. Slap the word Belgian in front of chocolate, and you get all kinds of happy, high-end associations. Sainsbury’s Belgian bar was a 72%, like its Sao Tome, but the two had significant taste differences. So yay! Sainsbury’s wasn’t sneakily making one type of chocolate and packaging it as two!

The Belgian dark was quite creamy for its high cacao percentage. Unlike the fruitier Sao Tome, this bar had more of a dusky cocoa-ness to its flavor. And it wasn’t nearly as pretty as its single-origin counterpart, though it also came in a flimsier wrapper, making me think that I caught the two bars in between a production/packaging switch.

I’d give these two bars an OM. As far as flavor complexity goes, they’re not astoundingly intriguing, but they’re nice enough for snacking or even a low-key chocolate tasting. I’m not lamenting the fact that I can’t easily get them in the States, but if I ever get to go back to England, I’d buy them again.