When Dom reviewed the first Mast Brothers bar I felt a genuine pang of envy. Seriously. When I read the review I immediately lusted for a taste of this wondrous chocolate that those bearded brothers were bringing to life in Brooklyn. You can imagine my delight when the Chocolate Society sent me a bar in a sample pack a couple of weeks ago. Mast at last! Joy!
Now, I don’t know how common this is, but when I get my hands on something that I know is a bit special, be it chocolate, wine or a certain food, I sometimes find myself putting off getting stuck into it. This is particularly true when it comes to chocolate tasting – I want my palate to be completely untainted, for my senses of smell and taste to be at their peak. Winter colds and spicy foods, plus a lack of time, meant that I walked past this bar at least twice a day. That distinctive blue wrapper, reminiscent of William Morris wallpapers, kept popping into view, until I finally decided it was the right time for the first taste.
One thing has to be said about this chocolate. It’s pretty much as pure as it gets without actually being 100% cacao. Most chocolate has four ingredients, confectionery chocolate a few more. This bar has two ingredients, 81% cacao and (by default) 19% cane sugar, both organic. The cacao originates from Patanemo, Venezuela. The tasting notes advised me of ‘Cinnamon, nuts and spice’ but my first sniff of the bar was more red fruits and leather. The chocolate itself is very unfussy. twenty eight rectangles of dark, glossy chocolate with an excellent snap. Like all well tempered chocolate, it rattles quite loudly when a piece is dropped onto the rest of the bar.
Popping the first piece into my mouth I was immediately struck by how dense the cacao flavours are. It’s a full bodied, slightly acidic, deeply flavoured chocolate with overtones of red fruits and an undercurrent of spiciness. The use of cane sugar means that the slight molasses-like qualities of the sugar blend well with the cacao, tempering some of the acidity and softening the texture and flavour a little. The mouthfeel is quite ‘thick’, with the chocolate dissipating slowly. It’s a rich, ‘heavy’ chocolate with quite a spectrum of flavours from the initial fruity, acidic peak as the chocolate begins to melt, with the spicy undercurrents coming in as the cacao flavours build and reach their peak as the chocolate melts away.
It’s a surprisingly complex chocolate, and great for pairing with other foods (so far a certain coffee and my favourite old Irish Whiskey seem to marry well with it). The Mast Brothers’ reputation is well founded, and my first taste of ‘American Craft Chocolate’ (thankfully not ‘Kraft’) just makes me want to try the rest of the range.
Despite having had Divine chocolate in cocktails and brownies recently, it’s been a while since we’ve reviewed any of their actual bars, and being a bit of a ginger fan, I thought I’d give this one a try.
This is a 70% dark chocolate, and as with all Divine products, it’s made with Ghanaian cocoa beans from farmers who are shareholders in the company.
Of course, Africa doesn’t grow the finest cocoa beans in the world, so Divine are somewhat limited by the quality of the beans available to them. Given those limitations, Divine do a great job in getting quality products into the shops that give the farmers a fair price for their work. And it £1.25 for a 100g bar, you get a fair price too.
So how does it taste? Pretty good actually. The chocolate doesn’t have an especially complex flavour, but that’s one of the reasons I chose a flavoured bar. The ginger and orange lift an otherwise ordinary dark chocolate into something that I quite enjoyed.
Both the ginger and orange are done in a subtle way, so don’t expect huge chunks of pepper ginger or an overpowering citrus hit. Instead, the flavours simply complement and lift the chocolate. Given my love of ginger, this was a bit of a disappointment at first, but that didn’t stop the bar disappearing quite quickly!
This was never going to be a fine chocolate, but as a quality bar to nibble on with a cup of tea, it’s really quite pleasant. I would have preferred a little lot more ginger myself, but for the price, it’s certainly worth picking up a bar to satisfy those every day chocolate cravings.
Jersey Devil Chocolates, being a new company, currently have a single product: a 54% dark chocolate bar with chipotle chili and cranberries that sells for $3.50. The premise is the Jersey Devil folklore of a flying, hoofed creature in New Jersey, where the company is based. As I stare at the face on the white wrapper, his image puts in mind Mr. Tumnus from the animated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (which is a commentary on the quality of that movie, not on the Jersey Devil, with whom I have no problem as far as images of Jersey Devils go).
The bar itself is simple. The bottom face is studded at intervals with cranberries, an interesting and unexpected addition, especially for a company who makes only one bar. It can bode well, though, if it means that Jersey Devil is going their own way while making another spicy chocolate bar.
My taste explication is thus: some chocolate, some fruit, some building spice, some fruit as it is exposed more by the melting chocolate, more building spice that now begins to itch down the throat, a temporary respite to taste the chocolate, spice, chocolate, and a finish on one last cranberry piece. It leaves you with a glow of spice that I found, strangely, to be the highlight. It’s warm with the memory of the chocolate (which I have no further comment on since you can never get much of a handle on it).
Don’t misunderstand this bar: it has a real kick. Because of this, the cranberries are a welcome addition. They offer a chance to leave the spice in the background for a couple seconds, keeping the chocolate from being in constant flame. I’d say it’s a good start from Jersey Devil. The single half square I started with was enough for a whole experience.
When ‘The Chocolate Society‘ got in touch to offer me a few items for review, he mentioned Vestri White chocolate. “How odd.” I thought, having only quite recently had my first encounter with Vestri and rather enjoyed it.
As you can see, the presentation was a little less stylish than one might have expected, but this is a sample pack. To be honest, when you look at the chocolate, it’s hard to imagine how else to package it.
The white chocolate is a combination of 30.1% cacao butter and 6.7% cream, resulting in a very rich, sweet confection. The shards themselves are just thick enough to conceal a toasted sesame seed. In other words pretty thin. It had been quite a while since I’d tasted any white chocolate, and I wasn’t quite prepared for how sweet it was , but a little salt soon settled things down a little.
When you find the sesame seeds and bite down, that nutty, toasty, slightly bitter flavour cuts right through the chocolate, and when you find some salt to play along, the three flavours come together in total harmony. While I’m the first to admit I don’t care much for the white stuff, I found the use of salt and sesame inspired and well balanced. I’d be the first to tell you that white chocolate is too sweet, and these two additions do a good job of cutting that sweetness. For my tastes I could happily have had a few more sesame seeds, and a good dose of salt, but that would obviously alienate the white chocolate buyers (or at least the less adventurous ones!)
We’re slowly seeing an influx of Vestri products in the UK. They’re another small producer of fine chocolate, done italian style, and I believe they’re a name worth looking out for.
