Impact
Cacáo from the island of Madagascar usually ignites a chocolate sparkler with all sorts of berries tingling about the taste buds that can sometimes cut as razor-sharp as a set of opossum’s teeth whose red gums & longs rows of incisors will sever the hand that feeds it in less than a minute flat.
So instead of trying to replace Javier Bardem as Spain's finest actor (at least in the chocolate biz) with Goya-deserving grimaces as it falls mightily like an uprooted tree in the cacáo forest while preparing for its doom in the belly of a black mambo, Chocovic decides to stay true to form & stick with its Pralus-worthy script of hot-button roasting to suppress any revolt or insurrection from this island’s often blistering cacáo.
Here then a chocolate version, to borrow Paul Valéry, 'of sound mind'... which is one who keeps the inner madman under lock & key.
This bar just locks it down, then Chocovic throws away the key. And no metal cutter, or that urban myth of freon & nitrous is gonna freeze & crack that.
So instead of trying to replace Javier Bardem as Spain's finest actor (at least in the chocolate biz) with Goya-deserving grimaces as it falls mightily like an uprooted tree in the cacáo forest while preparing for its doom in the belly of a black mambo, Chocovic decides to stay true to form & stick with its Pralus-worthy script of hot-button roasting to suppress any revolt or insurrection from this island’s often blistering cacáo.
Here then a chocolate version, to borrow Paul Valéry, 'of sound mind'... which is one who keeps the inner madman under lock & key.
This bar just locks it down, then Chocovic throws away the key. And no metal cutter, or that urban myth of freon & nitrous is gonna freeze & crack that.
Appearance 4.2 / 5
| Color: | a Dark Mad - jet brown w/ just the slightest orange patina |
| Surface: | finely striated (brittle butter? see Snap) |
| Temper: | padded vinyl sheen |
| Snap: | jackhammer breaking rocks; minute Surface striations embedded thicker on the edge w/ airholes too |
Aroma 8.1 / 10
clay pot vessel wrapped in leather... C’vic vying w/ Pralus to steal Prometheus’ fire: flaming silver chert crystals, the clear & clean quartz lighting up roasted cashews & cycad nuts inside -> baking soda the by-product -> aerates silverberry ‘n ash; litchi on the rubdown
Mouthfeel 12.1 / 15
| Texture: | clumps up... |
| Melt: | ... lumbers along |
Flavor 44.5 / 50
chocolate hash the blowback from ash -> flakes all over litchi which rolls in it for some lickety cocoa litchi -> lightens to shadowy silverberry -> mentholates w/ juniper berry -> ylang in the chocolate recesses -> superimposed cycad -> shuts up a cedar box
Quality 17.8 / 20
Atypically good; low acid & very little minerality; leveraging its DNA in a different way. Delivers heavy chocolate mass, prone to the edge of bittering by hi-heat, & the resulting ash then gets refined by this origin’s resident sweetness & acids. A calculated calibration by Chocovic in light of its Selváticas blends that put Madagascar beans to more traditional use; namely, for its sparkling fruit notes.
Here, those notes & their amplitude get reduced & reposed just short of being effaced, as a strong roast converts many of this cacáo’s compounds into stout chocolate flavor for, this, one of the staunchest Madagascars around, exceeding even the dark limits of Marcolini and Pralus that fools of a superior Ivory Coast bar.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, cacáo butter, soy lecithin
Reviewed Autumn 2009
Here, those notes & their amplitude get reduced & reposed just short of being effaced, as a strong roast converts many of this cacáo’s compounds into stout chocolate flavor for, this, one of the staunchest Madagascars around, exceeding even the dark limits of Marcolini and Pralus that fools of a superior Ivory Coast bar.
ING: cocoa mass, sugar, cacáo butter, soy lecithin
Reviewed Autumn 2009