Geminus Chocolate Diamond Bark

Geminus, Inc., to my surprise, is a local company (to me, that is), coming out of Scottsdale, Arizona. The chocolate people usually don’t flock here too much; they must not be keen on their hard work melting away in the Valley of the Sun. Geminus, however, isn’t exactly a chocolate company: headed by Jovan Van Drielle, they make specialized items you can have your logo/name put on. As far as chocolate goes, they make custom bars, boxes, molds, and edible pictures. Their Chocolate Diamond Bark is what I was given.

From the outside to in, you can tell Geminus works to please the eye. In a gold wrapping is a plain brown box like those The ChocolateSmith uses. This one is completed with a thick, cream and brown polka dot bow, whose ends are finished with not a straight cut, but a ridged one. The brown tissue paper inside has a sparkle to it, sealed shut by a sticker label. Now the actual bark. Large pieces of chocolate are scattered with “diamonds” or rock candy and small, circular pictures, similar to what is printed on cakes. On the Geminus site, there is a sample bark dressed up for a wedding. It seems it would make a nice addition to a wedding table, a little sparkly while still not overdone, with pictures of the couple that can be eaten instead of stashed away and forgotten.

I first assumed this to be dark chocolate: its color is a middle tone that lends a bit more to dark. It tasted dark, too, at first, of a better quality than novelty chocolates tend to be. It reminds me slightly of the Original Beans Cru Virguna bar – sweet and pleasant chocolate. Then I realized that the flavor was also rather milky. This is, in fact, a combination of milk and dark chocolate. You get the best of both sides, making it something to appeal to most everyone. Its flavors are warm with cinnamon and coffee.

The diamonds come into a bit here and there. The effect is like finding salt in chocolate, only with sugar instead of salt. Little sections of crunch make for a break from letting the chocolate melt, without much influence on flavor. I’m glad to come across a chocolate whose unique looks I can compliment, then enjoy eating rather than finding barely tolerable.