Impact
A rich, fat blast of flavor which concentrates the senses to the point that if someone standing next to you were to suddenly drop dead, you wouldn't notice. Whereas Bernachon's Dark Café rages mostly coffee, this is the power of sugar 'n cream multiplied... dramatically colored by the 2 great ones (coffee & cocoa) for golden butter-toffee tones set to a texture that auto-collapses to make knees swirl then go swudgy faster than a foot-freak can kiss his mistress' feet.
Appearance 4.5 / 5
| Color: | mocha terra cotta |
| Surface: | solid pour |
| Temper: | kiln glazed |
| Snap: | low & heavy; termite-infested edge wall |
Aroma 8.3 / 10
airy & frothy: cocoa puffs cereal -> malt balls -> multiple-cheese waft -> candy mocha -> herbal tobacco in the distance
Mouthfeel 14.7 / 15
| Texture: | ganache magick |
| Melt: | express |
Flavor 43 / 50
sinking cream -> mocha tucked into butterscotch toffee -> sugar wrap; beautiful pool of café-chocolate au lait in the after-math
Quality 17.4 / 20
Bernachon is so local he practically never leaves the block. An original pioneer in micro-batch processing, he sticks to his roots, refusing to play the global distribution / marketing game, making his work available only from a sole shop in Lyon, France (+ one or two other exclusive locations). This gives him almost iconic status in the chocolate constellation at a time when any cocoa-ego who can run to Kinko's to print their name on a label & glue it to a box thinks they're an all-star. It also insulates Bernachon from trends as apparently the subtlety of French Impressionists or the distortion of German Abstract Expression never appeared at his doorstep.
That unaffected 'small-is-beautiful' ethos translates into very readable chocolate, where everything can be clearly detected, a throw-back of sorts, still employing additives that pre-date our current age of the single-bean fetish stripped lean without vanilla & lecithin & more. Hence, the prolific number of blends & flavored bars in his portfolio.
Which all goes into this bar being Baroque-busy yet stable as the Counter-Reformation. Think polyphony by Palestrina. In this case, a chocolate Escoffier dismissive of nouvelle cuisine.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, cacáo butter, dried milk, Columbian coffee grains, vanilla bean, non-GMO lecithin
That unaffected 'small-is-beautiful' ethos translates into very readable chocolate, where everything can be clearly detected, a throw-back of sorts, still employing additives that pre-date our current age of the single-bean fetish stripped lean without vanilla & lecithin & more. Hence, the prolific number of blends & flavored bars in his portfolio.
Which all goes into this bar being Baroque-busy yet stable as the Counter-Reformation. Think polyphony by Palestrina. In this case, a chocolate Escoffier dismissive of nouvelle cuisine.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, cacáo butter, dried milk, Columbian coffee grains, vanilla bean, non-GMO lecithin