Archive for the 'Reviews' Category

Caffènation barista team judges Choqoa chocolate bars

Published on March 18, 2010 in Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Antwerp, bar, barista, Caffenation, coffee.

Last week I visited Antwerp’s finest coffee bar: Caffènation. Rob, the owner, is super passionate about coffee and I’ve seen him building up his wonderful cosy, quality coffee bar for several years now. He was eager to find out about my chocolate, so eventually last week I dropped one of those famous Choqoa Discovery Packs at the famous barista place.

His fellow coffee servants swiftly gathered around the mysterious black bag and upon seeing the contents, they surely had hard times waiting for opening that newly discovered black gold. Eventually however, the proof is in the tasting, and seeing some of Belgium’s most famous coffee cup champs rolling their eyes on munching these wonderful chocolate bars, was a pleasure all mine!

Rob mailed me some days later with more detailed notes, so here it is: the uncensored Caffènation review on some of the ‘Selected by Choqoa’ chocolate bars. It’s great to see how people take a personal twist on taste

François Pralus – Madagascar: 7/10 Citric, a very ‘natural’ taste, somewhat ‘beastly’ even, needs time to adapt yourself too it.
Bonnat – Trinité: 9/10 Very sweet and buttery. Gives a sensation of melted chocolate with orange and cherry. Delicious!
Bonnat – “Hacienda El Rosario” : 6.5/10 Somewhat in between, slightly too powerful on the palate en brute. Very complex though.
François Pralus – Venezuela : 5/10 Very ‘bitter’ and pretty harsh.
Michel Cluizel – Vila Gracinda : 9/10 My favourite. Starts really creamy and evolves into huge piles of tropical fruit with fresh made chocolate mousse.

A big thanks to sharing your impressions and feel free to follow the Caffènation blog. I’m looking forward to publish many more responses from people who rediscover superb chocolate with Choqoa!

Report: Choqoa Tasting Event 10.2

Published on March 3, 2010 in Reviews and Tastings & Events. 0 Comments Tags: Amano, Arriba, Bali, Bonnat, Brazil, Ceylan, Criollo, Dominican Republic, Domori, Ecuador, Esmeraldas, Francois Pralus, Jembrana, Los Ancones, Madagascar, Michel Cluizel, Pacari, Sao Tomé, Sur del Lago, USA, Valrhona, Venezuela, Vila Gracinda.

Wrapping up our second tasting this year, again it’s an evening to which I can look back loaded with sensations and discoveries that are changing people’s mind on dark origin chocolate. In our beautiful loft-lounge style setting I introduced the cacao harvest & production process, to show people how careful this pretty sexy tree needs to be treated to give us such fine chocolate. Every tasting session is somewhat different and the Q&A was focused around Belgium not being ‘The Promised Land’ of chocolate (anymore), the scary variety of substances in chocolate bars, en tips to keep and store chocolate.

Chocolate and its plethora of surrounding topics always make a great conversation starter, so pretty soon we had a good vibe, getting us open to enter the tasting part. After 4 bars only, people were amazed already by my broad offering and the variety in tasting sensations, even ‘less appreciated aroma’s’ were adding to overall discovery experience.
Noteworthy where also organic Pacari, the recent Akesson’s and absolutely the handcrafted Amano Jembrana, which I exclusively got from the USA directly from founder Art Pollard, with a big help from Martin at SeventyPercent as well in London.
These treasures aside I also showed a bloomed bar of Willie’s (don’t know how that happened actually), and wowed them with the Michel Cluizel ‘Grand Lait 45% milk bar’ (‘Is this milk chocolate?!’), shared unroasted and roasted cacao beans I received from Pralus, and put the cherry on the cake with the Pralus 100% as the usual über chocolate experience!

You can tell it was fun if people say they would come back for another tasting session, hope to see you next time as well!

Continue reading for details on the tasted bars…

Continue reading ‘Report: Choqoa Tasting Event 10.2′

Bar Battle: Amedei “La Tavoletta 70%” vs. Zotter “Nicaragua”

Published on January 14, 2010 in On Chocolate & Cacao and Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Amedei, Bonnat, La Tavoletta, Labooko, Nicaragua, Puerto Cabello, Tessieri, Venezuela, Zotter.

As said, munching on chocolate is always better with two or more varieties, so I had some bars from my stock and felt like doing a small tasting comparison. While browsing my selection I noticed the ‘grand dame’ Amedei next to some new Zotter bars. Curiosity aroused, so here’s another fun “from A to Z” Battle of the Bars:

Amedei: La Tavoletta Toscano Black 70%

No need to introduce the Italian brother and sister Tessieri that helped putting fine cacao crafting on the map like no other. The 70% Tavoletta smells fresh and flowerfull and this packaging design is timeless.
Chewing on it, it keeps its really fresh character, and almost reminds me of eating fresh raisins. An always present very light chocolate flavour gives persistent support to coffee, red fruit. It won’t let you go that fast and melts down really slowly. The taste curve keeps its pace and sustains a continuous experience, really ‘fleshy’ almost, forcing you to discover the subtleties. A lingering aftertaste only slowly leaves you waiting… for the next chunk.

Zotter: Labooko Nicaragua 80%

This rather new Austrian chocolate maker has some very interesting and unique origin offers, like this Nicaragua. The whole Zotter ‘Labooko’ series come in a unique design wrapping and a 35gr pocket fit size.
A well designed bar that smells very tobacco and leather. This Zotter bar takes a breath, starts slowly and then speeds up to a powerful release of unique flavors: liquorice, pepper, coffee that build up strong to the 80% and then go steep downhill your throat with a clear end point, a remarkable experience curve, hinting for molasses, walnut and mushroom, ending with surprising fruity goodbye.

Bonnat: Puerto Cabello 75%

I could not resist more chocolate and had to unfold another one. With a fresh delivery of some Puerto Cabello bars, I looked forward for what is said to be one of Bonnat’s best bars in his white wrap collection. Opening the bar you recognize the typical perfectly tempered bar that looks shiny and silky. The smell is a promise for something deep and rich, chocolaty, with nuts, caramel and cinnamon or clove?
Put this bar on your tongue and you will be welcomed by a very mature cacao experience, entering your palate with a polite bow. Then it starts to dance and waltz to every bud on your tongue releasing one flavor after the other back and forth: cookies, cloves, nuts in a moving mouth choreography with berries and tropical fruit. There is not a single touch of bitterness at all, and the 75% makes it a perfect balance of intensity and flavor. Damn I ate it all!

The Verdict

I’m not taking into account the wonderful Bonnat here. As for the experience itself, the Amedei and Zotter were a perfect opposites attrack! Amedei slow and straight, the Nicaragua like a tsunami.
Depending on your music preference, I’d say Amedei is that great piece of Classical music, where the Zotter Nicaragua rather plays the contrabass solo on a standards jazz record. Look at the packaging differences, it says it all! Though all three are awesome bars, I felt pretty jazzy today, so for me Zotter ‘Lobooka’ Nicaragua wins on points from Amedei ‘La Tavoletta’!

Report: The First Choqoa Tasting Event

Published on November 29, 2009 in Reviews and Tastings & Events. 0 Comments Tags: Akesson, Amano, Amedei, Bonnat, Carn Mor, Chuao, Colombia, Dominican Republic, event, Francois Pralus, Madagascar, Michel Cluizel, Ocumare, pairing, Pralus, Sambirano, SeventyPercent, tasting, Trinidad, Venezuela, whisky.

In Belgium, home of the world famous ‘Belgian Chocolates’, I’ve taken up the challenge to share and show people the path to real chocolate, fine origin artisan cacao.
After a long while I decided to do so starting with the now infamous Choqoa Sampler packs, and also by organizing chocolate tasting events to have the means and moments to personally inspire people with “the food of the gods”. My first event took place some days ago and here’s how people responded to chocolate:

We were with a nice group of about 10. After some earlier small informal tryouts I took some learnings with me and started off with a small introduction on the sexy cacao tree, pods and beans, and briefly explained the making process. We had some good questions then on the differences with industrial brands like Callebaut and I showed some pics of the Amano Chocolate factory.
Mosts really appreciated this introduction, because the cacao tree is funny, sexy and full of secrets, and how often do you wonder yourself about the source of your food?

Off to the tasting then! I learned from Martin Christy, founder of SeventyPercent.com, to make a program instead of just grabbing for some bars, so I made small plates with chunks from all the bars to hand out. I also distributed some sheets to take notes and a tasting wheel to have some reference to our taste buds. All this helpst to take the clutter of the table and focus on tasting chocolate. The Amedei was a great opener to ‘set the bar’and we then moved on to plenty of other bars, the full list is below this post.

Time after time most were pretty intrigued by the variety of aromas and sensations, though they suggested getting some more guidance in what flavors they should detect. A good point to work on! I would also have put some more variety in the selection, I still had too many options, but off course it also depends on your stock as well.

One of the participants, Johan, is doing a great job in sharing the message for me and he brought me a fresh Amano Ocumare milk from San Fransisco. All of us were really surprised by this very untypical milk sensation; it’s a superb bar that gives a whole new level to milk chocolate. I’m leaving the idea of ‘percentages’ more and more and this bar proves it’s very very possible.

As a special for this evening I also served a double fine whisky and chocolate pairing: but you can read all about this tantalizing pairing experience in my previous blog post.

Those true discoveries were the better moments, and most likely everybody said to have had a very nice tasting experience and gladly returned home with their own chocolate bars.

Check out the next Choqoa tastings en events on my EventBrite page, see you soon!

Read on for details of all the tasted bars!

Continue reading ‘Report: The First Choqoa Tasting Event’

Choqoa’s First Whisky and Chocolate Pairing

Published on November 3, 2009 in On Chocolate & Cacao and Reviews. 1 Comment Tags: Balmenach, Brésil, Carn Mor, chocolate, Clynelish, Dominican Republic, Equateur, Glen Grant, Glengoyne, Glenn Ort, Indonésie, Madagascar, Michel Cluizel, pairing, Papouasie, Pralus, Trinidad, Vintage Collection, whisky, WIB, wine.

A couple of days ago on an afternoon I sat together with WIB, an importer of great fine whisky, to tryout some pairings with chocolate. So far I only did once a pairing with chocolate and wine, which was really fun, but whisky was really an unexplored space for me… and that had to change!

Bart is an exclusive importer and brought a fantastic Vintage Collection of 24 different small whisky bottles, and the first thing I have to say is that he made me (re)discover whisky! Just like I share my passion to help you discover great chocolate, this kind of whisky stands out from everything I had so far, because I just didn’t know better so far!

Given the idea that this pairing was new for both of us, we just started tasting some bars and bottles, all of them were wonderful, but off course finding a good match takes some more tasting along. The first thing to do to match alcoholic drinks and chocolate is to find the right tasting technique. I think enjoying chocolate with wine is very different from pairing it with whisky. With wine you’d melt a piece half in your mouth and sip in some wine, with whisky however it soon became clear we had to seek a different approach because of the strong character and the alcohol.
What did work was sipping the whisky first, swallow and only then join in the chocolate chunk. The melting chocolate then eagerly mixed with the evaporating flavours of the whisky that last long in your mouth, and that’s a ticket for some nice experience!

Before, I assumed whisky would need by definition a strong chocolate bar, high in cacao percentage like a Michel Cluizel Infini 99%, or a Pralus 100%. But it unexpectedly got a lot more interesting and pleasant to discover that with these particular bottles from a Carn Mor ‘Vintage Collection’, any chocolate had a chance to match. We sipped from exquisite single cask whisky distilled by Balmenach, Clynelish, Glenn Ort, Glengoyne, Glen Grant,… and munched mainly on Pralus with his bars from Trinidad, Equateur, Madagascar, Indonésie, Papouasie, a lovely Brésil and Dominican Republic!

Just as with wine some made war, some separated ways only halfway, and some made love from the start! But above all it was a great discovery to have this sensation of whisky and chocolate finding each other on a long adventure of flavours, and from both ways enrich each other’s aromas and sensations.

To our own pleasure, and because we were really enthusiast ourselves on this experience, our final winning pairings are going to be launched in a limited box, so let me know if you may be interested in this as well!