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!
Varsha