Color:	cold fuschia
Surface:	very little fictile about it... just a heavy plate
Temper:	opaque (big butter content)
Snap:	knocks & boxes the ears; quite literal; clean, sharp crackle

push / pull action: puckered tamarind & prune tang waft out over roasted grains (quinoa, rice, coffee), vinyl, & tin -> bounces up rubber -> chokes down compost -> guava dooky -> incidental cocoa

Texture:	resisitant
Melt:	prolapses into a spherical dimension thanks to lecithin

fastbreak chocolate BANG -> explodes off cocoa-coffee grains -> punctured by prunes / tamarind -> beautiful passing bitter offset -> rare quinoa-guava combo -> coffee pouring all over it... flattens profile into charred grounds bordering dirt -> late brazil nut brownie limned in guava -> deep shaft of blood orange

Tremendous scale accompanied by alternating balance/imbalance. Salgado, never shy on the roaster button, torches this too but to good effect. Over-shoots it to lose control in the last quarter of the progression yet this bar, bathed in butter to imprison an all-out insurrection among bitter ashes, also retains just enough acidity & maintains its structure even at endtimes, & never just in the rearview mirror, to prevent an all out kill-off to stage that encore of sorts with nuts & fruit.

Whether thru Felchlin, De Vries, or humble Alter Eco, once more Bolivia delivers a harvest a bit off the cocoa-grid, bringing a taste one-step closer to the jungle than most.

ING: cocoa mass, sugar, cacáo butter, lecithin; CBS (Cocoa mass/Butter/Sugar ratio): ~5:7:5

Reviewed 7/10/09