Tcho ‘Citrus’ Dark Chocolate

I picked up this bar and the Tcho “fruity” bar at the recent Chocolate Unwrapped show (Dom had the other two). As I am not personally a fan of dark chocolate, I recruited a friend to share the experience with me. Dom already described the packaging and general appearance in his post about the “Nutty” bar, so I shan’t go into that, though my friend did point out her mild annoyance at the fact that the bars don’t break evenly into pieces along the marked lines, which seems odd for such attractive, seemingly well thought out bars.

This bar was made with Madagascan chocolate beans, that are said to have a citrus edge to them. Like the “nutty” bar Dom reviewed, the “citrus” bar did not taste very much at all like citrus to me .It offered a short burst of freshness to begin with, which quickly faded into the bitterness I usually associate with dark chocolate. My friend, while noting more of the citrus tones (lemony, rather than orangey, she said) also noticed the quick fade.

Neither of us felt the sour cream finish mentioned in the blurb on the back of the packaging, but the bar was rather creamy compared to many other dark chocolate bars I have sampled in the past (though still not as creamy as milk chocolate, obviously).

I found the concept behind this series of bars interesting, as they seemed to me from the blurb to be educational in nature – teaching people who don’t know much about chocolate how to be connoisseurs, at least in their own eyes. Having tried this one, I found the flavour description reminiscent of the blurb you often find on wine labels telling you about the wine being fruity, flowery or spicy. More often than not, the flavours hinted at seem practically nonexistent, as was the case here. As I prefer strong flavours in my chocolate, this wasn’t really the bar for me at all, but purists or aspiring purists may find it interesting.

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