Impact
A 75% Brazilian that blows... well, a little heavier & paradoxically sweeter... like Sergio Mendes & Brazil 77 fronted by Amma’s Bahian neighbor Daniela Mercury on one of her many Trio eléctricos (sound-system floats) singing Só pra te Mostrar (Just to Show You) and Você Não Entende Nada (Nothing You Don’t Understand).
Appearance 3.7 / 5
| Color: | deeply purpled brown |
| Surface: | unevenly molded + release marks in the center; vigorous swirling on the airside |
| Temper: | absorbent (big butter) |
| Snap: | right on the mark for a 75% |
Aroma 8.8 / 10
lays down more core cocoa than its leather-clad 85% brother, & sheep’s cheese rather than that’s Milk Choc cast -> fruit-leather on the edge break
Mouthfeel 11.6 / 15
| Texture: | Wax Factor™ yet overall light body |
| Melt: | time-lapsed everlast |
Flavor 45.1 / 50
floral cocoa (frangipani & Passiflora caerulea aka blue passion flower) -> dried grumichama (Brazilian cherry) -> brown spices (including sugar... sassafras, tonka) come thru scot-free -> fig -> minor light acid (capuaçu to caza & gooseberry) brightens the spices -> soda -> White Choc as butter melts thru -> wafer -> clears off wood ear mushroom
Quality 17.9 / 20
Unlike any Diego "Amma" Badaró to date: Spices ‘n Flowers.
That spice quotient resonates shades of Central American cacáo (Nacaragua / Panama). And his feral fruit signature virtually erased & principally replaced by baseline chocolate, the result of a truncated ferment &/or aggressive conching (the advantages to owning a cacáo estate), all further suppressed in copious butter.
Then again, maybe all his talk of subtle variations on Amelonado which he variously calls Parasinho, Puerto Seguro and Palmahita growing on the family's Fazenda Monte Alegre property accounts for the differentials in his bars' flavors.
Just one more reminder that chocolate end-flavor owes to a myriad of factors... some which remain un-quantified.
Neither a charred bit nor off-note to be found. Badaró showing he can practically do whatever he wants.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, cacáo butter; CBS (Cocoa mass / Butter / Sugar): 7:8:5
Reviewed January 2011
That spice quotient resonates shades of Central American cacáo (Nacaragua / Panama). And his feral fruit signature virtually erased & principally replaced by baseline chocolate, the result of a truncated ferment &/or aggressive conching (the advantages to owning a cacáo estate), all further suppressed in copious butter.
Then again, maybe all his talk of subtle variations on Amelonado which he variously calls Parasinho, Puerto Seguro and Palmahita growing on the family's Fazenda Monte Alegre property accounts for the differentials in his bars' flavors.
Just one more reminder that chocolate end-flavor owes to a myriad of factors... some which remain un-quantified.
Neither a charred bit nor off-note to be found. Badaró showing he can practically do whatever he wants.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, cacáo butter; CBS (Cocoa mass / Butter / Sugar): 7:8:5
Reviewed January 2011