Willie’s Cacao Indonesian Gold

This is my first crack at reviewing one of Willie Harcourt-Cooze’s creations & I chose the somewhat bizarrely named Javan Light Breaking 69 to get my teeth into.

Willie’s notes start with the phrase ‘Long Forgotten Flavours’, so I’m guessing this is made from hard to find beans. The tasting notes also suggest rich caramel & toffee flavours & with only thee ingredients there was no doubt that I was going to get the full flavour of the beans.

What struck me first about this chocolate was the acidity. When you first taste it it comes across as quite bitter with very little cacao flavour coming through. as the chocolate begins to soften & melt in the mouth those caramel and toffee flavours start to develop but to be honest I found them more ‘burnt’ than ‘rich’. It was almost as if this chocolate had been ‘left on’ for too long and had acquired a singed flavour. This burnt sugar taste tended to persist to the last moments of the chocolate, softening out into a long finish which retained a lot of the initial acidity. The more subtle flavours of the cacao weren’t really revealed until the chocolate was more or less gone, which I found a little odd.

In fact ‘odd’ is about the best description of this chocolate. From the tangy aroma to the burnt sugar taste that dominated the whole experience, I found myself asking if i would actually buy this to enjoy at home, and the answer was ‘almost certainly not’. I’ve tasted Willie’s cacao before & have quite enjoyed it, but this little oddity is one I wouldn’t perk up at.

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