Color:	pale rouge
Surface:	oops, manufacturer forgot to scrub off the "Bonnat Chocolate" embossing
Temper:	more than the economy experiences a recession
Snap:	boom

initially flat & unresponsive
comes to with dramatic tension between a compote vs. compost that dips into an inkwell
once fully airborne molasses / tobacco / sapote slather on a thin layer

Texture:	standard smooth
Melt:	uneventful

ample fudge quickly beats a retreat into cream ganache -> coffee -> gets lost in the woods (blackwood / Gliricidia sepium) against a black molasses sky which obscures the path to an equally bleak / dark dead-end leavened only by white cane acting as a thin ribbon of midnight sun

Cousin & companion to Barba + a raft of other "varietals" so designated by Xoco Gourmet based on imprecise phenotype (appearance) rather than more definite genotype (genetics).

This chocolate lacks any uniquely identifiable characteristics. The Johe type a green-ripened-to-yellow nippled-apex pod with semi-warty skin that belongs in the generalized Amelonado crossbreed family of Central America.

If these are the kind of seedlings which Xoco plants in the millions across the countryside, then they might pose a risk, potentially a hazard, to traditional landraces (old time cacáo) that will lose the battle to this army of proliferating upstarts. From the vantage of species conservation, it presents a grave concern; doubly so for mediocre flavor outcomes (which could be related to post-harvest as much as genetics).

Let's hope this bar is an unrepresentative batch & better results await improved preparations.

INGREDIENTS: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter

Reviewed July 17, 2013