A questionable foray into extreme percentages for Guittard, who prove that they’re best sticking to their guns and aiming for the 63-67% range. At this high percentage there is no room for mistakes and unfortunately Guittard makes many, leading to a charred, overroasted bar that may also have come from beans of less than the ultimate quality. An experimental venture best abandoned.
Reviews
Alex Rast: 25-Jan-2008
| SCORES | Score/10 | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Aroma: | 7 | 10% |
| Look/snap: | 8 | 5% |
| Taste: | 4.5 | 35% |
| Melt: | 8 | 5% |
| Length: | 3 | 15% |
| Opinion: | 4 | 30% |
| Total/100: | 47.25 | 100% |
| INFO | |
|---|---|
| Best before: | |
| Batch num: | |
| Source: | |
| Supplied by: |
A sinister black appearance to the chocolate is the only, even vague, sign of trouble from a bar that looks very good – expertly moulded and tempered, with no immediate defects. The aroma, meanwhile, is only slightly more worrisome. Yes, it has a strong coconutty component, but equally prominent is bright cherry cordial, and interesting hazelnut and woody traces appear, suggesting reasonable balance.
With the flavour, however, the bar loses all equilibrium, spiking initially with strong cherry cordial and then utterly collapsing with a flat dusty and even ashy taste that implies massive overroasting. Ever so often hints of that nutty component materialise, along with vanilla, but the chocolate dies a quiet, rapid death. We might well mourn the loss, for the initial flavour suggests Guittard may have opted for a strong Colombia component, one of their best origins, but then ruined it with an inadvisable series of blending choices, probably involving heavy Forasteros.
Melt, while excellent in normal terms, very creamy and smooth, might by the standards of a 91% even yet be thought of as a bit off, for with 54% cocoa butter this bar should be effortless. But here again it would seem that process choices were inappropriate. One gets the feel of a bar rushed to market to fill an emerging niche without due consideration of its conception. Guittard should probably have spent more effort in formulation and manufacture here, for the result in this case is a bar every bit as much to discard at leisure as it is to produce in haste.
