Madagascar 75%
by Ritual
Impact
Chocolate produced from Madagascar cacáo often wears a feminine countenance.
Wanna know how a woman truly looks? Catch her in the morning when she runs down for the mail she was too busy to fetch the day before. No foundation, no eye shadow, no lipstick for public consumption.
This bar contains only cocoa mass & sugar. The equivalent of "free-bar'ing" it without any make-up. Which can appear, at least from the very outside, as the the lemur depicted on the cover of it (click image upper right to enlarge).
Though they seem bug-eyed, a lemur's vision is rather spotty. Instead it relies more on a long snout & olfactory nerves. In fact, lemurs even communicate that way -- sending out messages to each other related to sex, age, & mating status via scent glands (underarms, genital, etc.), as well as scent-marking a territory with urine.
And when it comes to serious sport, some lemurs wage hissy 'stink fights' by rubbing their tail on scent glands before flicking it back & forth at their opponents.
Here's a bar engaged in a similar ritual of aromatic signaling.
Wanna know how a woman truly looks? Catch her in the morning when she runs down for the mail she was too busy to fetch the day before. No foundation, no eye shadow, no lipstick for public consumption.
This bar contains only cocoa mass & sugar. The equivalent of "free-bar'ing" it without any make-up. Which can appear, at least from the very outside, as the the lemur depicted on the cover of it (click image upper right to enlarge).
Though they seem bug-eyed, a lemur's vision is rather spotty. Instead it relies more on a long snout & olfactory nerves. In fact, lemurs even communicate that way -- sending out messages to each other related to sex, age, & mating status via scent glands (underarms, genital, etc.), as well as scent-marking a territory with urine.
And when it comes to serious sport, some lemurs wage hissy 'stink fights' by rubbing their tail on scent glands before flicking it back & forth at their opponents.
Here's a bar engaged in a similar ritual of aromatic signaling.
Appearance 4.2 / 5
attractive physique that reflects all the cosmetic beauty of an airbrushed head-turner
attractive physique that reflects all the cosmetic beauty of an airbrushed head-turner
| Color: | signature Madagascar orange-umber |
| Surface: | slate scored into 9 slats; nothing but healthy skin, symmetrical features, fine bone structure; unblemished save for release marks on the face... |
| Temper: | ... that mar a buffed sheen |
| Snap: | vocal alarm -- brittle, loud, & long; sheered edge wall |
Aroma 7 / 10
pines away ... pine needles, the pine-inflected juniper berry, & pineapple... longing for some ballast which it finds in a bottom roasted note that chars some ylang-ylang desperate to perfume up like a pheromone
Mouthfeel 9.8 / 15
| Texture: | taut gum |
| Melt: | slow release |
Flavor 37.4 / 50
spice attack (vetitver-cinnamon) -> charred volatiles in & around some vain acidulation that goes virtually nowhere, stopped in its tracks by a butter trap, further weighed down in a jackfruit squat representing latrine bahavior -> expresses out some gaseous grapefruit -> cocoa bends at the very end -> hazelnut the post-crypt
Quality 12.1 / 20
Unevenly roasted (at odds with what Ritual swears to be a meticulous sorting & roasting process even as it acknowledges a challenging bean size / shape) & overly tempered (into Beta VI territory though. again, the company professes this to be a perceptual cue of a bar containing an origin that lacks relatively high lipid content & does not include any additional cocoa butter; of course storage & weather conditions plus lipid quality could also factor in).
Whatever the precise causes, the result is angular & tightly wound, & yet still fairly dull.
INGREDIENTS: cocoa mass, sugar
Reviewed October 22, 2012
Whatever the precise causes, the result is angular & tightly wound, & yet still fairly dull.
INGREDIENTS: cocoa mass, sugar
Reviewed October 22, 2012