Impact
Tantalizer leaves the memory’s buds aching for what might have been - & still could be – holding out but never quite reaching the promise of the ultimate, purely naked, essential chocolate. Instead, on the tongue’s slippery slope down, reverts to a therapeutic Chocolate 101 tool for people afraid of the dark: it turns their nightmares into the safe reality of just a dream.
Appearance 4.4 / 5
| Color: | copper & pewter in slate brown |
| Surface: | great face; dense rock-like exterior built to last |
| Temper: | semi-lustrous |
| Snap: | solid clunk; clean break |
Aroma 8.6 / 10
warm comfort tones: coffee, olive, herbage (dried grass & dirt, fennel, banana leaf, hibiscus & slipper elm), roasted pecan-maple, vanilla-cinnamon, burnt toffee
Mouthfeel 15 / 15
| Texture: | velvet alert: sensational reach around |
| Melt: | the melting grail |
Flavor 39.9 / 50
light cinnamon / licorice w/ a fudged nudge -> long uninterrupted cacáo-butter plane, idles forever to the point of... giving up... when, wait... patience rewarded: purely teasing cocoa tannins -> chocolate cream in the burnt shadows -> offset nut -> eventually submerges back into the buttered vat ozone -> verbena the Java capstone
Quality 16.2 / 20
This bar, composed of beans from South America, West Africa, & Java, has over the years varied from flashes of greatness, to fudge-sludge, to very good but somewhat closed & undeveloped (odd considering it's a blend with vanilla which better helps to maintain consistency). Perennially lacks the mass & muscle to make it over the summit in its perpetual quest for elegance (like 2-time Prix de Goncourt winner Romain Gary). Paradoxically planar, shallow flavor yet too dimensionless, cool & neutral in feel.
CBS ~2:3:2
CBS ~2:3:2