Impact
Black & blue colored packaging for cacáo sourced from the Red Island. And kinda battered & bruised it is, a case of petty domestic violence. Nothing extreme, just a little slappin’ around & in the melee spilled juice sops over a wooden countertop that becomes the tongue which neighbors might take as maybe something light & kinky going on, along with bedtime reading material from the likes of Stendhal & Marquis de Sade.
Appearance 3.9 / 5
| Color: | milk choc brown / orange creamsicle |
| Surface: | Sambirano Valley |
| Temper: | soft-polish |
| Snap: | high, tight, & sharp pitch; airholes along the break |
Aroma 7.9 / 10
a cedar box: heavy spice/wood (incl eucalyptus), more than usual for the origin, as if hanging out on another island - São Tomé or better still Grenada - otherwise inconclusive data covered in butter: dirt, dim pine nut/pinesol, delicate off-odors (cheese, chert, green leaf); add buttermilk & caramel backing; along the Snap-edge more trad Mad perfumes: a single white grape, maybe one berry overhead, & a litchi
Mouthfeel 10.7 / 15
| Texture: | hard Wax Factor™ |
| Melt: | staggers, staged & ultimately anemic |
Flavor 38.2 / 50
quite the light show (mostly lite & white); loads in cinnamon caramel (vanilla making its presence felt right off) -> warm cocoa-nut (pignoli) to cool acid (yellow plum) -> grows girrrlllie sweet & thin toward pineapple juice -> staying yellow... blank albino raspberry for lemon drop almost overtops its chocolate undersupport -> traditional Madagascar gin -> soft apple cider -> vinaigrette -> falls out cedar
Quality 14.6 / 20
"Darling" chocolate.
Classic A-B-A format which is great if this were a ganache & the brackets had more girth than the lean rails they are now, with that long crazy-quartz concourse in between, signs of easy-going roast & moderate conche applied to thoroughly fermented beans.
This amounts to the 4th year running that Amano has yet to get a handle on the origin. While a vast improvement over intitial batches (those were extreme citric wash-outs... particularly Batch #314166 just bleaching underlying components, poor Prototype Jrs.: over-acidulation, no counterbalance, meager body of steely cold entry -> low spearmint -> high citrus breeze -> portobello mushroom trying to fight passion fruit... (& loses) -> to vinegar residue). The updated version equals some more of the same though better harmonized. Still lacks however the clarity of Patric’s crystal palace where the acids vividly color the bar, & the chocolate bodyweight of Ambanja by Guittard or the Domori Madagared. Instead, the vanilla here & butter (probably from a completely different source) splotch the canvas, then smear the acidity into a murky yellowing... jaundiced in effect.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, cacáo butter, whole vanilla; CBS (Cocoa mass / Butter / Sugar ratio) ~2:4:3
Classic A-B-A format which is great if this were a ganache & the brackets had more girth than the lean rails they are now, with that long crazy-quartz concourse in between, signs of easy-going roast & moderate conche applied to thoroughly fermented beans.
This amounts to the 4th year running that Amano has yet to get a handle on the origin. While a vast improvement over intitial batches (those were extreme citric wash-outs... particularly Batch #314166 just bleaching underlying components, poor Prototype Jrs.: over-acidulation, no counterbalance, meager body of steely cold entry -> low spearmint -> high citrus breeze -> portobello mushroom trying to fight passion fruit... (& loses) -> to vinegar residue). The updated version equals some more of the same though better harmonized. Still lacks however the clarity of Patric’s crystal palace where the acids vividly color the bar, & the chocolate bodyweight of Ambanja by Guittard or the Domori Madagared. Instead, the vanilla here & butter (probably from a completely different source) splotch the canvas, then smear the acidity into a murky yellowing... jaundiced in effect.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, cacáo butter, whole vanilla; CBS (Cocoa mass / Butter / Sugar ratio) ~2:4:3