Richard from Chocolate & Love gave me this bar a while back and it’s been happily sitting in my “review queue” waiting to be scoffed. On Wednesday though, I had the good fortune to meet the man responsible for growing the cocoa, so I thought now would be as good a time as any to tell you about it!
The man in question is Frank Homann, CEO of Xoco Fine Cocoa. They’ve taken a uniquely scientific approach to finding and cultivating the highest quality cocoa beans in Honduras and Nicaragua, with the Trinitario beans in this bar coming from Northern Nicaragua. This video from Xoco’s web site explains a how they go about doing that.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3cQN7EtRvk
Frank is an incredibly interesting guy with a passion for his work and a strong believe that high quality, rather than bulk cocoa is the way to help the poorest farmers make the most of their assets.
This bar is an example of that. It’s produced in very small batches for Danish chocolate company Friis Holm, and it’s quite unusual both in terms of taste and texture.
But the thing that struck me most when sampling this bar was how different it was from the one I sampled while talking to Frank. The bars looked identical, but were clearly from a different batch. The one Frank brought had an unusual leathery, tobaccoy flavour, whereas this one has a much more delicate fruitiness to it). And that’s despite the bars apparently being made from cocoa from the same trees by the same people.
What that shows is how important the treatment of the beans is after they’ve been harvested. The fermentation process in particular plays a hugely important role in how a finished chocolate tastes, and something as simple as how long the beans are fermented can have a marked effect on the final flavour of the chocolate.
One thing both bars had in common though was texture. The chocolate has a smooth, glossy feel on the tongue that’s quite unusual in itself. It melts quite slowly, meaning the flavours do take a while to come through, but once they do, they hang around and stay with you long after the chocolate has melted – that’s a sign of a great quality dark chocolate.
The Friis Holm bars are not cheap at all. In fact at £12.40 for 100g bar, it ranks up there with the most expensive chocolate in the world. But having had a little insight into the work that goes into just growing the cocoa, I think it may be worth it. If you’re serious about dark chocolate, you should definitely give it a try.
This rather cute chocolate Christmas tree kit apparently came about by accident. Having designed the product, Cocoapod found it was impossible to post reliably without arriving in pieces, so opted to sell it as a “DIY kit”.
Needless to say, I had to try making it myself. If I can put it together, so can anyone!
The kit comes complete with everything you need, including chocolate buttons for melting to form the ‘glue’ and a small paintbrush to help paint the melted chocolate on. The instructions tell you to melt the chocolate over hot water, but I opted to use my mini chocolate melting pot.
However you melt the chocolate, it doesn’t take long and only a small amount is needed to stick the pieces together. The difficult part is waiting for each piece to harden into place before adding the next. I’m not good at waiting…
Waiting aside, the tree is easy enough to put together, and comes with a nice cellophane bag and ribbons, so you can give the finished product as a gift. But it’s the DIY aspect that makes this tree special. It’s simple enough that a child can make it with a bit of supervision, and they get to give a gift that they’ve made themselves.
At £10 for 250g of chocolate it’s not cheap, but when you factor in the fun of putting it together, I think it’s reasonable value. You can buy it online, or catch Cocoapod at the upcoming Taste of Christmas and Southbank Chocolate Festival events.
And before you ask, I’ve no idea what they chocolate tastes like… I’m giving mine away!
These beautifully packaged shards of chocolate are something of a departure for Katie Christoffers’ Matcha Chocolat. Until recently she has concentrated on her (equally beautiful) tea-infused filled chocolates, so I was intrigued to see how she would approach these.
There are three varieties of shards, and they all come in these attractive reusable tin tea caddies.
Inside each tin is a sealed cellophane bag containing 100g of thin shards of broken chocolate. All the chocolates are flavoured and studded with pieces of fruit, nuts and cocoa nibs. The three varieties are:
Dark Chocolate with Cardamom & Rose
The first thing I noticed about these is the lack of actual tea, and a little bit of research reveals why. Rather than putting tea into everything for the sake of it, Katie has opted to go for flavours that are inspired by classic tea blends. The inspiration for this one comes from a Persian recipe for rose & cardamom infused tea.
The chocolate itself is infused with rose water, giving it a very gentle flavour. The cardamom gives the chocolate a gentle warmth, and the crystalised rose petals and pistachios on top add texture more than anything.
Milk Chocolate with Bergamot, Nibs & Candied Orange
As you might expect for a chocolate containing bergamot oil, this has a particularly strong aroma. In fact, after having had the tin opened for a few minutes, the whole room smelled of it. So I guess whether or not you’re going to like this comes down to whether or not you like bergamot.
Personally, I like it a lot, and it works well paired with this milk chocolate. Like the rose & cardamom shards, these have a gentle warming flavour that’s perfect for a cold winter’s day. Like today.
White chocolate with Vanilla Chai & Caramelised Nibs
Finally, we have a white chocolate with vanilla and chai spices (cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg and cloves), topped with caramelised cocoa nibs.
The spices are evident from the outset here, both from the colour and speckled effect of the chocolate to the aroma. When you put a piece into your mouth, those flavours come first and foremost too. As the chocolate melts, you’re left with a creamy vanilla flavour and the slightly nutty crunch of the cocoa nibs.
I don’t know that I’ve ever had caramelised cocoa nibs before, but they are a really nice addition here. The sweetness of the caramelised sugar really helps bring out the flavour of the nib without any bitterness at all.
As you might expect with a white chocolate, this is quite sweet, but you only need a small piece to fill you mouth with flavour.
And that’s the same for all three varieties. The smallest piece of chocolate fills your mouth with gently warming spices. Those flavours do tend to cover the flavour of the actual chocolate a bit, but I still found all three very enjoyable. The beautiful tins would make a wonderful Christmas gift, or you could just share them with guests over the festive period. I don’t think you’ll get any complaints either way.
Information
- Buy it online from:
- Contains dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate (40, 64% cocoa solids).
- Filed under bergamot, cardamom, dark chocolate, matcha, milk chocolate, nibs, rose, tea, uk, white chocolate.
This is my second Vestri bar, bigger but with less of a pedigree than the single estate ‘Hacienda Alegre‘ bar I reviewed a while ago. Vestri are one of Tuscany’s top chocolate makers, and after the Hacienda Alegre bar, I was expecting good things.
This bar is made from 81% ‘Finca’ cacao – Finca being a Spanish (and presumably Italian) word for an estate or farm. Unfortunately there’s no indication of where the cacao is from or which variety of beans go into this bar bu it has a dark, deep aroma with a hit of bitterness.
As you can see, it’s also been moulded in a very distinct way. No doubting who made this one!
The dark, bittersweet flavours hinted at when I smelled the bar were amplified when I tasted it. A mild acidity on the tongue which didn’t intensify too much as the chocolate melted. A light mouthfeel with definite bittersweet cacao flavours which included citrus and winey overtones. It has a slightly grainy texture (as one might expect from such a high cacao content) but never becomes too earthy and maintains a smooth, clean finish with those wine and fruit aromas lingering on the palate.. I’ve had bars in the seventy percents that were far more bitter and difficult than this one. It’s an excellent, classic bittersweet dark chocolate bar, pure and simple.
Like the previous Vestri bar, it’s available through Baruzzo Chocolate. Not cheap at over a fiver a bar, but if you’re on a mission to taste the best Europe has to offer, this has to be on your list.
