The colour of this chocolate is a long way from the ‘black’ of some lesser bitter chocolates – you might well mistake it for milk at first glance. The snap is very solid, revealing a red-flecked granite roughness with the odd bubble.
The aroma is so distinctive here I’m tempted to call it just ‘porcelana’, but it could be described as a combination of caramel, red wine, exotic fruit and tobacco, with a deep underlying tone, which is just too hard to name, but maybe leather and honey would come closest.
At first the taste is acid/lime with liquorice, but on the first bite the true pedigree of this chocolate shines through in a sudden flood of intense honey, caramel, on the edge of ‘umami’ – again that hard to pin down ‘porcelana’ taste. A little thick in the mouth, but this does not linger. Towards the end the flavours resolve into chocolate loveliness, without the slightest hint of burning or other mistreatment of the beans. The length is lime with a slight cheese sourness, but steady all the same.
A high chocolate indeed, you will forget this is a strong 70% chocolate without any added cocoa butter – this is chocolate honey.
