I don’t want to hijack the white chocolate thread with tales of other chocolates, but I do want to write about the fancy chocolates I’ve tried recently, and thought others might want to add their experiences, too.
Why I've been buying over-priced fine chocolate recently
About a year ago I enrolled in a vaccine study, and every time I went in and gave a blood sample, they paid me $100. The first time they paid me, I used the money to buy drugs and stuff for my mom, but after that, I decided to have a little fun with it, and buy myself a fancy box of chocolate each time I was paid. So I did.
The most recent fancy chocolate purchase was inspired by the white chocolate thread:
So I bought this:
and while I was at it, I also bought the orange chocolate bar, a set of 5 single-source chocolate bars (“taste the world”) and some lemon pepper truffles and some passion fruit truffles.
At half the price, I would buy them all again.
I think my favorite is the lemon-pepper truffles, which are quite similar in flavor to the bar I fell in love with so many years ago. The truffles are attractive, and generously sized, so one feels like a serving. But at $5 per truffle, there are other choices that are better.
The passionfruit truffle wasn’t quite as good, but it was really excellent, and again, at half the price, I would be happy to buy more.
I previous wrote my review of the lemon-pepper bar. It was good, but I think it would have been better without the sea salt, which I found distracting and discordant.
(it doesn’t have lemon zest, per the ingredients, so I guess it’s just the coarsely-ground pepper.)
The orange chocolate bar was superb. I buy chocolate oranges for Christmas most years, and this is what those are striving to taste like.
The five varietal chocolates were quite different. Some I loved, and some I didn’t care for.
- Guatemala: This is the only one I didn’t like. I felt like it had an off flavor, and was vaguely plastic-y.
- Brazil: This had an excellent flavor, but an oddly chalky texture for high-end chocolate. And while it tasted very nice, it wasn’t an especially interesting chocolate.
- Peru: Possibly the best. It had a slightly sour profile (which I like in chocolate) and packed a deep, rich, rounded chocolate punch.
- Ecuador: This one had some unusual vegatal undertones. I’m not sure I loved that, but it made for an interesting and unusual chocolate. The texture was superb, and overall it was a unique and tasty chocolate.
- Madagascar: I don’t know what it is about the terroir of Madagascar, but I usually am a sucker for Madagascar chocolate, and this was no exception. It has a very bright sparkly initial note, and good chocolate flavor and texture. The finish isn’t quite as long and smooth as the Peru, though. But I would happily eat this one all day. For half the price…
Most of the other fancy chocolates I’ve purchased recently were “boxes of chocolate”. I’ll come back and describe some of those later.