Light coloured as you expect from Indonesian cacao, though nothing nearly as ‘milky’ as something like Domori’s Javablonde’ achieves. Willie’s style is thick and rustic, giving us more of a thick thud than a light click on breaking.
The aroma is clean sweet tobacco and red fruits, with a little greenness and sulphur.
The flavour travels from tobacco/fruit, then into polenta, then rising prune notes, into ginger, fading into ginger biscuit. Light fruit and spice afterwards. Certainly strong and punchy, with a sharp almost leather spike at it’s peak. This really hits you, but is quite typical of the bean source. All this is probably helped by the Cuban raw cacao, which will have it’s own presence, adding molasses and fruit.
Texture is thick fudge, which comes from Willie’s ‘minimum meddling’ approach. (Though a lighter roast could take this a step further).
There’s a digestive biscuit / shortbread note in the after taste, which I often associate with over-stirring, making the fat (the cocoa butter) too ‘short’. I could be wrong though. Otherwise the after taste is pleasant if strong and not too tannic. There are slight metallic hints and a little waxiness towards the end, but the flavour gets you past these.
For me, this is the surprise star of Willie’s range, quite eatable despite the spikey leather/fruit punch and delivering notes true to the bean source.
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