After a long incubation period, the new fine chocolate industry association Direct Cacao was finally launched during Chocolate Week in London on 12 October 2012. Less than a week later, many of the founding members were in Amsterdam for the second yearly ‘Origin Chocolate Event‘.

Flemish Belgian chocolatier Geert Vercruysse was also at the event, exhibiting his chocolates in the central hall of the Royal Tropical Institute in (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen). Geert has a reputation for experimentation, using different chocolate from makers from around the world in different combinations in his ganaches.

So it was a moment of serendipity that Geert’s latest collection could almost have been designed as a ‘Direct Cacao’ special, featuring chocolate from members, potential members and other direct sourcing chocolate makers. It was a must, then to take away a box of Geert’s inventive creations to sample.

There’s some free thinking here, with whole, flavoured chocolate bars used to make ganaches – Geert is like a kid in a toy box, but at least he’s playing in the right toy box with the best toys to be found in the chocolatey world. Overall though, the quality of the chocolate used is key and everything else follows effortlessly – good ingredients and good technique equals good chocolates. Easy.

Original Beans Cru Virunga 70% enrobed Grenada 38% Felchlin

Like the Grenada ganaches, Geert has made a special cocoa butter transfer using the Original Beans logo, so there’s really no mistaking whose chocolate is being used. This is direct sourcing and transparency taken to a new level. An interesting milk/dark combination here, with the milk unusually being on the outside.

At first the two origins fight a little, but as the ganache melts the Virunga sweet plum notes come through, with green tea, honey and of course milk popping up because of the milk/dark combination. There’s also a slight floral edge going on, again probably the result of the match of chocolates rather than a distinct note in either. This is rather like matching chocolate with wine or whisky, putting two things together and getting something new that wasn’t in either.

The Grenada Chocolate Company 65% dark-raspberries enrobed Cru Sauvage 68% Felchlin

Tart fresh raspberries paired with the sulphurous rum notes of Grenada 65% couverture. Beautiful chocolatey aftertaste with a burst of raspberry mousse. The raspberries create a great textural effect, somehow both munchably thick but meltingly light at the same time. A very innovative and successful combination.

Pacari 70% Raw enrobed 38% Grenada Felchlin

Something of extremes here, Pacari 70% Raw almost ironically enrobed in a 38% milk chocolate. Very palatable and rounded, with the cream ganache creating a green tea note from the usual Pacari green banana.

Enjoyable, but the cream and milk chocolate probably hide the more interesting notes of Pacari Raw – though some might prefer this softer and more controlled interpretation.

Danta Finca Las Acacias milkganache enrobed Cru Sauvage Bolivia 68% Felchlin

Milk chocolate made in Guatemala from local criollo cacao, mixed up with a dark coating from Felchlin’s famous Beni. Notes of hay and green grass create in a delicate milk ganache that’s not too sweet and that has a clean milk aftertaste.

Original Beans Beni Wild Harvest 68%

Purely Original Beans Beni, both inside and out. Soft toffee notes, blackcurrant jam and hints of coffee, though I suspect closeness in the box to the Grenada dark-raspberries piece has had some influence here. Lightly tannic at the end, but overall very smooth.

Askinosie Del Tambo Ecuador 70% & nibs enrobed Cru Sauvage Bolivia Felchlin

Full peachy dry raisin and wine notes in an exciting ganache that really enhances the flavours of the Del Tambo bar, losing the slightly rougher, drier Askinosie texture but gaining another level of flavour. Geert being Geert has thrown the whole bar in, so you get the nibs as well, though they do tend to go a bit soft inside the ganache.

Akesson’s Black pepper enrobed in Cru Sauvage Bolivia 68% Felchlin

Another ‘whole bar’ experiment, this time with the already flavoured Åkesson’s Organic – Madagascar 75% with Black Pepper. As well as being the source of some of the best cacao in Madagascar and the Pralus-made chocolate he makes from it, Bertil Åkesson is also a master of pepper. His is some of the best you can get and is pretty much all I use in my kitchen. A lot of chocolatiers agree – you’ll often find Åkesson to be the source behind their pepper ganache or bar creations.

Here the ganache softens the initial effect of the pepper, with a creamy fruity notes you’d expect of a Madagascan ganache, then the quality of the pepper coming through softly in a controlled way at the end. Not at all overpowering.

Others in the collection: ‘The Grenada Chocolate Company 82% enrobed in Grenada 38% Felchlin’ – an extreme of Grenadan contrasts with an initial milky hit followed by deep Grenadan fruity rum.

Without knowing it, Geert’s created something special here – a leading edge ganache collection using chocolate from leading edge, directly sourcing chocolate makers. If Direct Cacao and supporters like Geert are a success, this is the future of the fine chocolatier.

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Keeping up with all the incoming fine chocolate bars is hard enough, so we usually tend to ignore approaches from high street brands producing mid-market ‘premium’ products on a large scale.

It’s summer though and we’re outside the rush and tumble of the autumn/winter chocolate season. So when the Social Media manager for UK premium chocolate brand Elizabeth Shaw suggested they send samples of their new, expanded range, my reaction was ‘why not’, let’s see what you’ve got. Traditional ‘luxury’ brands like this obviously need to move forward with the general upward quality trend in the market or lose their market position, so it would be interesting to see if the Elizabeth Shaw brand was up to the challenge.

Mint tradition

Elizabeth Shaw are famous in the UK for their mint crisp disks, foiled wrapped thick disks of chocolate with mint candy crisp pieces mixed in. This is a combination I remember well as a kid, in even cheaper corner shop type products (anyone remember the Biarritz mint crisp bar from the 1970s?)

Our continental cousins have never quite fully understood the British taste for chocolate and mint (except perhaps in a very refined ganache, made from infused fresh mint leaves.) The minty crunch against a melted chocolate background can be a very good one though – perhaps overdue for reinvention by one of our top chocolatiers.

To capitalise on their fame then, Elizabeth Shaw have recently expanded their range into other areas of crispiness, including butterscotch crisp, orange and – really keeping up with the upward market trend here – cocoa nibs in a dark bar.

Crunchy selection

Even before tasting these products though, glancing at the ingredients does not bode well. The dark chocolate in the dark crisp disks is only 45% cocoa solids (remember that a good, normal, sweet tasting fine milk chocolate like Valrhona’s classic Jivara is 40% cocoa solids, and that’s a milk.)

To quote their marketing notes: “Typically, Dark Chocolate can have a really bitter taste, but Elizabeth Shaw’s Dark Chocolate uses 45% Cocoa Solids, so you get high quality chocolate but without the bitter taste to it.”

I think readers of this site can guess my reaction to that statement, but let’s look in detail. “Typically, Dark Chocolate can have a really bitter taste” – yes, it is quite typical and that’s what happens if you use bad cacao that’s over-roasted and made into bad chocolate.

This is marketing hype at its best, trying to twist a negative into a plus. 45% cocoa solids chocolate does not make ‘high quality chocolate’. It’s mostly sugar. Added to ‘crisp’ part of the products, which will also mostly be sugar, that’s a lot of sugar.

‘Flavourings’

That’s what first caught my eye, usually though the easiest way to work out if a product has a chance of being any good is to read the ingredients list from the end backwards. The point at which I would advise putting a product back on the shelf comes as soon as you see anything artificial sounding. Elizabeth Shaw Dark Mint Crisp Chocolates may smell of mint, but that’s not a word you’ll find in the ingredients list.

In this case, the culprit is the mystery catch all ‘flavourings’. I always wonder exactly what that means and it’s disappointing that this is allowed on food. You might as well just put one word down for the whole list: ‘food’, ‘ingredients’, ‘stuff’. It’s a bad sign though, real natural flavourings would be listed as themselves, anything else is artificial. The only reason to use flavour additives is because you chose cheap, poor tasting products in the first place. Basically you are trying to make cheap stuff taste better, with other cheap stuff. While the smell is pleasantly minty, the taste does not live up to that promise.

We can only guess what the original recipe of Elizabeth Shaw’s famous mint crisps might have been, but we can safely assume that it was not this: “Sugar, cocoa mass, glucose syrup, cocoa butter, invert sugar, emulsifier: soya lecithin, flavourings, raising agent: sodium bicarbonate”. (Taken from this information sheet). Notice the one significant omission there.

The new crunchy selection sounds really appealing, but fails to deliver on promise. Honeycomb is so easy to do, but the market research obviously came back ‘it needs to be more honeyish’, so a flavour is added. The butterscotch tastes over-sweet and over-flavoured at the same time. In the caramel, we can really taste the sweetness of the dark chocolate, along with a musty after taste. The cocoa nib disc is almost a relief after all these, but the dark chocolate is overly sweet with an unpleasant length.

A quick web search shows you can buy a 250g box of these online for £4. I guess I’m spoilt, but I can’t see this as good value. I’d rather spend £8 on 100g and begin to have something with better taste and less sugar.

Cocoa Crunch bar

Elizabeth Shaw have come closer to something authentic here. Their market research has identified a trend in the fine chocolate world – cacao nib bars – and tried to ride on this, bringing a new, sophisticated idea to the middle market. Imitations usually miss the point though. I love nib bars, right back to first tasting Cluizel’s “Noir au Grue” bar, which I first tasted in the early 1990s. The cacao solids have gone up this time, to a more reasonable 57% (apparently a ‘really bitter’ taste is ok here). This is still below the normal minimum though, even given the addition of cacao nibs, these bars usually start at 60%.

Nib bars are always easy to eat, and this is not the worst I’ve tasted by any means. The cacao though is clearly West African, with distinct coconut giving it away. To quote Elizabeth Shaw’s about page “That’s why we source a very specific blend of cocoa from the Côte d’Ivoire. It’s then refined for 24 hours, creating a smooth chocolate with an unforgettable texture and taste.” I really, really doubt that Elizabeth Shaw have any involvement in the cocoa trade in Ivory Coast or have been flying down there talking to farmers and sourcing cocoa. (Happy to be corrected if that’s the case.)

Callebaut chocolate

To a casual reader, this might suggest that Elizabeth Shaw make their chocolate themselves. But as we know, this really is very rare and for most companies like this, their key ingredient is produced elsewhere. Actually, in what’s probably an unintended burst of transparency, the source of the chocolate is given away by the ‘Quality Cocoa for a Better Life’ logo on the back of the bar, which on following the link given – www.qualitycocoabetterlife.com – takes you to a Callebaut website. So this is Callebaut chocolate, most likely not made in the UK. Possibly the whole bar is private label made elsewhere, as the Elizabeth Show website tells us only that ‘our Chocolate Crisp products are still manufactured here in Great Britain’, while this is not mentioned for other products.

The addition of butterfat in this bar is completely unnecessary and unwise. Cocoa butter is relatively cheap now (due to high Asian demand for cocoa powder) and could have been used instead.

This really reeks of lazy recipe design by food science and focus group, not by any desire to move the brand upwards through quality and taste. This becomes clearer in the aftertaste, which is really not fun – ‘battery on the tongue’ metallic, meaty and off-custard.

A few small improvements here based on taste and this could have been a reasonable lower-middle market bar. The lesson here is that if you move into the fine market, where people are buying more out of health and quality than brand ‘luxury’, consumers will in time catch you out.

Amaretto Flutes

30% milk chocolate sticks with a strange, off Amaretto marzipan smell and a chemical taste. We often talk about the importance of after-taste when it comes to chocolate tasting. It’s just as important for detecting good notes as bad. The problem with the really bad though, is they tend to linger and can be really hard to get rid of. I’ve noticed this is much more true of products with artificial flavours than natural ones. I now have off mint and off marzipan stuck in my mouth that I can’t get rid of.

Crunching to a conclusion

Overall, a collection that promises traditional English simpleness, but rather than sticking to good basic ingredients, tries to over-egg the whole thing through flavour additives. I could respect this more and its place in the market if there were a few more natural ingredients involved (mint?) I’ve nothing against well-flavoured sugar and sweetness, there’s a place for it. This is just disappointing though.

For more information about the Elizabeth Shaw brand, see: www.elizabethshaw.co.uk.

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So let’s exclude the idea of  ’porcelana’ from our minds and review the bar for what it is, chocolate made with the native cacao of Peru.

As usual, Bonnat bars are still 100 grams, a good chunky size that few other high chocolate makers still use.

The colour of the chocolate is brown with vivid burgundy hints, shiny and perfectly made in Bonnat’s traditional mould.

Tobacco and unlit match-head are strong in the aroma, but with definite floral hints – faint rose, mango and something like over-ripe fruit or perhaps papaya.

The taste has full fruitiness leaning towards apricot and lychee, with underlying brown sugar and malt, passing through a creamy burst. The fruit though leans towards overripe, with too much ‘yellow’ fruits and a slight underlying mustiness, suggesting fermentation issues. To cope with this, Bonnat has set the roast fairly high, which contributes to a bitter background note, noticeable especially in the length.

The mouth in the early stages is pleasant, balanced by the fruit, but tips off a little towards the end, when Bonnat’s typical high-cocoa butter content really becomes noticeable. Though the flavour while eating went on some interesting dancing fruit and floral explorations, the after taste is much less exciting. Fading of into faint lactic milk.

In my eyes Bonnat’s other Peruvian, Piura, is far cleaner and superior, and this seems to be the general opinion from Bonnat as well. An interesting bar to eat, but – in the case of this batch at least – does not reach the heady heights others have found.

The post Bonnat – Apotequil – Martin Christy review appeared first on Seventy%.

Aroma is nuts, tobacco, spice, overlain with raisin and strawberry fruit notes and a hint of rose. Clean, crisp, light cream and slightly nutty, and chocolate of course.

The flavour is definitely full and fruity, (‘ripe fruits’, just as Valrhona describe), plus hints of merlot and a distinctive tang in the after taste. Spice hints push it towards mulled wine. Close your eyes though and think of nut paste or gianduja and you’re a lot closer to the classic porcelana signature. There’s a certain, but not unpleasant oilyness and the edge of bitterness you get with good hazelnuts. In the background hovers a dark hint of Laphroig. With time in the mouth the fruit slowly rises up, finishing on nutty cream. At the end an oh so slight hint of ash.

Length is long and stable – light cranberry juice with a nut background.

This is good and interesting and a great chocolate to eat, with some fantastically complex notes and a great, balanced aroma. It has perhaps though not yet reached the heady heights we’d expect from the varietal, lacking that ultimate hint of magic, but this is the first proper year of this new vintage. Let’s hope for even better in the future. Given the recent tailing off of Palmira – the Venezuelan vintage that this bar replaces – it’s a step in the right direction.

One thing is for sure though, this is a much, much better and more accomplished chocolate than the original pentagonal presentation box from 2005, weird and fun as that was.

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On the tongue, Pralus’ thick texture is the first thing you notice, followed quickly by burnt toffee, some cherry/plum and notes of Dominican Republic rum (more salt than sweet). Along the way their are true Chuao tones and pleasant subtleties, including a fizz of light passion fruit/mango in the top.

Something here though is clearly burnt, as was Pralus’ own Chuao of the same period. There is a continual and lingering taste like the bitterness of burnt toast, and fatty fried cacao at the end. A great shame as this really spoils the potential. I believe this is the same batch (or similar) as Pralus’ first Chuao, as tried at the 2009 Salon. Even they didn’t like it then. The more recent batch, in a square 50g box, is much, much better.

That said, the after-taste is not all bad, and actually gets better as the burnt-bitterness clears, with some fruit, but still sour.

For the appearance, the bar is well moulded and shiny, with a burgundy brown colour. There is a good snap, though the chocolate is a little more flexible than we might hope.

Not the best of Chuaos by a long stretch, but edible despite the burnt note – a bit like eating burnt toast covered with lots of butter and apricot jam. Pralus’ high cocoa butter recipe probably helps with this.

The post Chapon – Chuao – Martin Christy review appeared first on Seventy%.

Like many of the new bars of Chuao coming onto the market, Chapon describe Chuao as ‘criollo’. (See the Manufacturers information section below.)

Chuao is not a criollo variety, it’s a location, a terroir, consisting of a blend of varieties. Other companies guilty of this confusion are Soma and Hotel Chocolat. (Who still described the bar as ‘criollo’ on their website at the time of writing, but I believe have now corrected their packaging.) I am sure they are not the only ones.

Chuao varieties

The Chuao valley is documented as containing 36 different varieties of cacao, from criollo through a range of trinitarios, right down to the Amazonian classic forestaro – amelonado. (San Jose’s Chuao, for example, is produced from three of what they considered to be the best Chuao varieties, cloned from the valley in the 1980s and grown in their own plantation in Rio Caribe. This is the cacao used to make Domori’s ‘Chuao Hacienda San Jose’)

It only takes a simple walk along the road from the beach at Chuao to the village to recognise the wealth of cacao varieties in the valley, as anyone who has been there will tell you. This is the beauty of Chuao as a source, and its strength. Chuao is a remarkable natural blend of varieties, environments and processing that just ‘comes out right’ – almost all the time. (I am told that higher up the valley there is a higher concentration of criollo and a different micro-climate, but I didn’t make it this far myself).

As far as I am aware, all the cacao is mixed and fermented together, there is no separation of the criollo element. This is supported by conversations with Amedei, Amano and questions asked directly in Chuao

Misleading marketing?

It is mistaken then at best and at worst misleading marketing to be telling consumers that Chuao means criollo. The association we can suppose is because Chuao is often considered the best of cacaos, and criollo the best of varieties, so one name attaches to another.

Perhaps over-excitement to heap praise on Chuao is the cause, which perhaps can be seen in this feature from the Chocolate Trading Company. They erroneously base their whole argument on why Chuao is so good on the mistaken idea that it is all criollo. Amedei, for example, have never described it in this way.

All this does not help transparency or consumer confidence in understanding cacao sources or believing what chocolate companies are telling them.

It would be better to be more honest about Chuao and celebrate it for what it is, not what some people would like it to be.

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Morin are not exactly a household name in the UK, but their chocolate has recently made a splash here since they’ve been working with London chocolatier Marc DeMarquette. Morin are the chocolate maker behind Marc’s award winning Vietnam bar, which was launched last year in conjunction with UK aid charity, ActionAid. Marc worked with Franck to create the bar, and has since worked with him on a number of other origins, including a rather interesting Peru.

The collection

I had tried Morin’s chocolate, but not their filled creations. It was a pleasant surprise then when a box arrived just before Christmas last year. It seemed only fair to post a review, but somehow two thirds of 2011 has already vanished! So here then is a very late posting of my notes from the end of 2010.

Morin chocolate box

Chocolate coated nougat

I’m not normally a nougat fan, having been brought up on the hard sticky-sweet stuff traditionally served in the UK. But as is often the case with well known and seemingly mundane foods, there’s often a little more depth and subtlty when you get to the quality end.

Cutting the Morin nougat and on the first bite it seems like it’s going to be quite hard, but the nougat quickly melts on the mouth. The aroma is of good fresh nuts,

As the nougat melts it gets sweeter, but not cloyingly so. The Morin chocolate coating adds a good compliment to the mix, but plays second fiddle to the nougat. After-taste is pleasant and clean.

Palet D’or praline

Most chocolatiers have a classic ‘Palet D’or’ in their collection, a usually round chocolate coated bonbon with a dash of gold leaf on the top. In this case, Morin have gone for a praline rather than ganache filling, with a very understated gold fleck. Praline could well be the traditional filling for a palet d’or in the area, but this is a first for me.

On cutting, there is a very good nut aroma. Eating reveals a rather sweet praline centre with a slight hint of the bitter taste of nut skins. The after taste is delicate, but somewhat sweet, with finally a little oil. The chocolate again is a good compliment, without its own outstanding flavour, but carries the filing very well. Very palatable, though on the sweet side.

Petit rocher

Morin chocolates

A classic rocher has a soft gianduja nut praline centre, surrounded by chocolate enrobed nut slices, usually almonds. That’s the classic version anyway, but each chocolatier will have their own particular take. (Which is usually a million miles away from the famous confectionery version found on sale in gas station forecourts.)

The Morin version is really a normal sized bonbon with a dark gianduja filling, with nuts in the coating chocolate. Unusual, but here Morin’s own chocolate comes into play and this is a much less sweet offering than some others in the collection.

The cut aroma is very good chocolate and hazelnut. The filling is very fine and suitably soft.

There are just enough nuts in the enrobing chocolate to give a good crunch, so despite the larger centre, the effect is very good.

There’s just a slight bitterness in the after taste, but this is still one of the highlights of the collection.

Kirsch cherry

Enrobed cherry in kirsch is something that’s plagued many a traditional English box. Usually, cloyingly sweet with a tasteless chewy cherry, wrapped in sweet, cheap chocolate, most likely with added vegetable fat and a bunch of preservatives.

It has to be said though, that with real pure kirsch, a quality cherry (watch out for the odd stone) and good chocolate, the result can be something quite different. Morin’s version sits squarely in this latter category. Good cherry flavour, good kirsch – sweet of course but this is balanced within the overall flavour and Morin’s own dark chocolate. The aftertaste is quite fine, with a slight salt.

Quite, quite edible. Perhaps I might change my mind about kirsch cherry.

Walnut coffee marzipan

A traditional combination that on the face of it sounds unlikely to work that well – coffee and walnut don’t necessarily spring to mind as ideal pairing.

The smell is really strong sweet coffee, and on biting the filling is very sweet too and somewhat grainy. This could have been quite disappointing, but the walnut on top is very good. It’s only when the walnut combines in the mouth with the coffee marzipan that this chocolate really starts to work. Perhaps too sweet in the mouth, it’s actually after eating that this offering seems most satisfying.

Truffle

A gold paper foil wrapped truffle, with a cylinder shape and dusted with cocoa powder. The filling is a milky, sweet gianduja ganache with a very clean after taste. Not exactly what I’d think of as a truffle, but this works well in Morin’s traditional style.

Pistachio marzipan

For me this is where marzipan really starts to get interesting, the flavour of pistachio taking a sweet classic to another level. The Morin version is ground fairly roughly, with a delicate pistachio flavour, especially in the aftertaste. Nicely done, but again a little sweet.

Summing up

Overall, a traditional collection done very well. There’s nothing modern or flashy here, just a quiet celebration of traditional craft, executed in a classy manner. While obviously geared towards more traditional, sweet tastes, this is not stuffy tourist fare, just gentle local quality.

Xoconuzco 70% – sample bar

Along with the Morin bonbon collection, an unbranded sample bar came in the pre-Christmas package from France. This is presumably an experimental bar or chocolate in development. As this does not appear to (yet) be availably commercially, I won’t add a formal review to the review section as yet, but instead here are a few quick thoughts.

Historically Soconusco was a satellite of the Aztec area of influence, extending through the modern state of Chiapas in the south of Mexico into Guatemala. Reputedly, it contained the personal cacao groves of Motecuhzoma, the famous and last-but-one – and ill-fated – ruler of the Aztecs.

Despite its history, Soconusco is not such an obvious source for fine cacao, as most of the ancient Mayan stock has been overplanted with inferior forastero hybrids. The region is now being rediscovered though, with many chocolate makers seeking out better cacao from the region – Bonnat and Askinosie being a few examples. It looks like Morin are soon to  join this trend.

The bar has yellow fruits, plum and a touch of sulphur, with a prune and citrus ending. It’s one of the better Morin bars I’ve tried, with a more controlled roast that some other origins. It certainly shows the promise of this until now little known chocolate maker, whose reputation I suspect is about to extend outside of their historical regional French home.

Info

Chocolaterie A. Morin
26290 Donzere
Drôme Provençale
France

Tel: +33 (0)4 75 51 60 76
Fax: +33 (0)4 75 51 58 97

Email : info@chocolaterie-morin.com
Web: www.chocolaterie-morin.com

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We’ve watched Grenada Chocolate grow up from being a small, innovative homespun chocolate maker and develop into an international fine chocolate brand, losing none of their colourful Carribean charm. along the way. They’ve survived through hurricanes and over time, have gradually improved the quality of their solar-powered organic chocolate.

Grenada Chocolate 71% – unwrapped

Grenada Chocolate is almost unique in the world – the chocolate factory is right on the founding cacao farm, which brings big advantages in terms of cacao quality control, and almost zero ansport and storage issues, but also brings it a bunch of challenges with temperature and humidity control.

As a further hindrance, for a while, Grenada Chocolate had to use a blend including Costa Rican cacao, while waiting for the local tress to recover from the storms. The chocolate is now though all purely made from Grenadian cacao beans, grown on the company’s own farm and associated cooperatives.

Now a new roaster has finally eliminated any hint of smokiness or burnt notes at the ‘edge’ of the flavour profile. Grenada have really cracked chocolate making in tropical conditions, coming close to the quality we’d expect from the top European houses. (Back in 2005, we were calling this same bar ‘rustic’).

Tasting notes

The chocolate has a light, rich brown/burgundy colour. There is a masculine snap, as this is rather a thick bar. Raising a piece to the nose, there is a beautiful cocoa dust smell, with hints of sulphur, cream and a hint of figs.

Grenada Chocolate 71% – low roast gives a light burgundy sheen

There’s a soft crumble on biting into the chocolate, followed by a beautiful explosion of thick, rich dates, wine, toffee, some cream, spice, ginger and honey, figs and then (black) toffee, toffee, toffee. The sugar is Caribbean organic cane (or maybe Costa Rican, I forget), so not being pure white, there will be a flavour contribution here from the sugar.

I get definite hints of sulphur, which I find typical of Grenada and which remind me of a sulphured Dalmore single malt, or Dominican Republic rum. (Have to confess to not having tried Grenadian rum, if such a thing exists!) Completely gone are any hints of fat burning or and defects from the non-Grenadian beans.

The melt is thick and fudgy, but not at all sticky. After-taste is clean cacao, lightly tannic, with a little bitterness and continuing notes of  chocolate ginger cake with a scoop of full cream.

This is less fruity than the 82% bar, a style choice according to Mott, so slightly less appealing for my own palate and for this I’ve scored taste and opinion a little lower than I might. The 82% on the other hand is of course stronger, so I can’t help wondering how a fruity 72% would do.

On the other hand, Mott gave me this bar late last year, so it’s been in the review box for awhile and has probably benefited from sitting for awhile – the fruit side has evolved a little since I first tried this batch last September.

If you want to understand the flavour of Grenada, you need to try this chocolate. Here we find the full expression of the flavour notes only hinted at in the Grenadian cacao sourced through the Goverment controlled monopoly, as tried in the likes of Amedie and the Felchlin made Larry Burdick bar.

Speed eating

Here’s another take on the Grenada flavour. At our public talks, we’ve increasingly been demonstrating ‘slow motion’ and ‘high speed’ chocolate eating  as a way to show people how to eat chocolate. The point is it makes a world of difference to the flavour if you don’t eat chocolate the right way.

Eating super-slow, only melting the chocolate on the tongue with NO chewing at all, you can really get the full flavour experience. The ‘fast’ way is chocolate in the mouth super quick, no smelling, just chew the chocolate and gone in less than ten seconds. Now the cocoa butter has no time to melt and interact with the cacao solids. Fruity flavours tend to be missed and  tannins allowed to reign free. Try it on your favourite chocolate, you may be shocked by the difference.

So Grenada 71% eaten the fast way? (Took me about 11 seconds.) Faint chocolate, not bitter, ginger biscuits, nutty, very fatty after taste, lightly tannic without flavour, tannins increase after time. No hint of figs or toffee, except a hint a minute after eating. Altogether a different chocolate. Remember, eat it slow(ish).

Grenada 71% – the old version

Grenada Chocolate 71% – old style packaging

When Mott gave me samples of the new Grenada 71%, he also wanted me to make a comparison with the old style chocolate, made before the new roaster was in place and sold in the old style horizontal packaging (which was not so supermarket friendly, it seems.)

The aroma has a sharp intense floral note, almost like jasmin. The mould is the same as the new bar, the colour though has less  of burgundy tinge.

On tasting, at the beginning the flavour begins quite similarly to the new version – spice, ginger, toffee, but then dives off into milk, sour fruit then milk again. There’s also some bitterness and a lack of balance, which previously held back the bar from a higher score. The after-taste is again lightly tannic, but has something a little metallic going on as well and is a little fatty after a few minutes.

Grenada has always been enjoyable chocolate, but was held back processing limitations, it’s been improving with every step though, and while always moreish, now also stands up as a fine chocolate in its own right.

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With a plethora of rule changes this season and a new tyre provider, calling the first race is going to be a tough one. Ferrari and Red Bull are the obvious contenders, but McLaren have defied the pundits in practice and are suddenly setting fast times. Are the two favourites just playing their cards close to their chests though?

As winner last year, first pick goes to Martin. But the competition is open to all though, so make your guesses in the comments, before qualifying to be eligible for a prize. (See here for full details).

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