Color:	murky brown
Surface:	marred & scarred
Temper:	DULL
Snap:	bingo; on-pt for 90%... some of the best in the biz; smooth straight edge

closed & oddly less sweet, even somewhat out of line with the spellbinding aroma of its 100% sib; cheese funk underscoring dessicated cocoa -> banana-cinnamon + hibiscus furnish glimmers of hope

Texture:	dry & suffocating
Melt:	elapsed as an hourglass

gnaws on green cocoa bean -> goldenseal -> stark nut husks -> smoked tea -> tobacco ash -> bitter background iron stays in check (though on the verge of bursting into an outrage) -> chocolate tries to breakthrough as sugar works its way up & forward... ultimately deported & falls back fleeing guanabana -> banana peel -> pecan -> green walnut -> blue cement the capstone; signature Ecuador astringency

Well-controlled but too little sugar to turn this over toward chocolate, leaving it in rather raw, austere territory with limited range & mobility. None of the euphorics & hedonics found in deBondt’s rendering of an Ecuador at a similar percentage (or even Slitti’s erratic versions). Those demonstrate that Plantations has nowhere near the handle on this origin that it should considering its line devotes itself exclusively to Ecuadorian cacáo. A better roast would help, for starters, & experimenting with a different shear on the conche (even though Snap indicates near-perfect work in this area) to drive off some volatile greens from an apparently short ferment. Either that or swapping out raw sugar cane for the refined kind because of factors noted in Vestri’s Naturale. At bottom, though, it's the CCN-51 that puts this in a world of hurt.

ING: cacáo beans, raw sugar cane, soy lecithin; CBS ~5:4:1