A bar made for La Grande Épicerie de Paris in lockstep with Viet Cong hero Vo Nguyen Giap who died this year at age 102 -- the last of Vietnam's old-guard revolutionaries whose legacy is second only to that of Ho Chi Minh.

Known as the “red Napoleon”, the brilliant & ruthless self-taught general from “the academy of the bush” drove the French out of Vietnam to free it from colonial rule. Later he forced the Americans to abandon their grueling campaign to save the country from communism… by nearly destroying it.

Giap stood out as the leader of a ragtag guerilla army who wore sandals made of car tires (way ahead of fashionable recycling on that one) & lugged artillery around, piece by piece, over mountains to encircle & crush the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. That unlikely victory, still studied at military schools, eventually led to Vietnam's independence & hastened the collapse of colonialism across Indochina.

His fiery temper & merciless strategies belied his dandy white suits & snappy ties. For instance, he regularly accepted heavy combat losses to achieve his goals.

This chocolate also takes on severe casualties but manages to last thru the battle fatigue for those only-from-Vietnam flavor quotients that still leave it well short however of the better spoils normally associated with victorious Marou, forcing it to fight on another day / in another, more favorable format. The grind continues...