Choqoa

So, last Tuesday night was the first origin bar tasting event I attended, and I’m not talking about comparing some white label ‘Ecuador’-‘Ghana’-‘Venezuela’ bars from the supermarket or even ‘pralines’ from your chocolatiers.
Tasting hosts Martin Christy and Steve from the website www.seventypercent.com are spreading the passion on high quality luxury bars for years, and their website contains tons of addictive content with pleasant überdetailed tasting ratings. Here’s how it went…

The location was at The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, where an intimate group of people came to explore the world of cacao, most of them were new to all this. While we started tasting, Martin was introducing each time the specific character and idea of each of the bars, revealing secrets and backgrounds on the whole bean-to-bar process, with excellent insights and fun facts on the go.

For every bar, we all shared what we smelled, tasted, discovered, appreciated and disliked. As more and more bars went over the palate – we had a godelicious selection of 9 in total, see notes below – all of the ‘newbies’ got fascinated by cacao and realized this was something not to be compared with ‘The Usual Chocolates’. All of them swiftly described the different hints they detected (nuts, fruits, citrus, bitter, liquorish,…) and how the chocolate felt in your mouth (silky, grungy, smooth, butterfish,…), making this all very pleasant and sociable.
Really interesting were the parts where Martin had something special for the tasting group  like the cacao butter, and a chunk of raw cacao that he bought himself at a local farmer’s market in Cuenca, Ecuador… There were also dried cacao beans and nibs from different countries we could eat: I had a Grenada and an Ecuador bean, and though still far from a chocolate taste as we know it, one tasted like a hazelnut, and the other was much more bitter like walnuts… All so fascinating! And with trying out all this pure ingredients, I was getting really high and happy from all the substances!

List & some details of tasted bars:

1. Amedei Toscano Black 70: Amedei, named world’s best chocolate brand, this blend is all about cacao craftsmanship and setting a benchmark for further tasting.
2. Michel Cluizel “Hacienda Concepcion”: a bar used to debunk some of the myths of percentages and bitternes, it’s a typical smooth Cluizel with lovely fruity palate works.
3. Pralus Madagascar. One of my favorites, a fruity Criollo bar that has acid notes and a rather deeper darker taste with coffee-ish sensations.
4. Grenada Co: bar from a new batch of the lovely, small Grenada Chocolate Company. Smooth creamy texture, very good chocolaty taste. Remarkable to hear Martin say it tasted better than the same batch 2 weeks ago, as if it were a wine that only now got his taste in shape.
5. Akesson Madagascar: Akesson chocolate was really new to me, never heard of this brand. Very interesting bar with extravert flavor developments, a successful joint-venture product, crafted by a famous French chocolatier, with cacao beans from a plantation where also other top-notch brands get their finest sources. A bar I want more from…
6. Willie’s Venezuelan Black. Being more one of a UK TV hero, Willie’s Venezuelan was not my favorite, though not bad at all, but not really recommendable either.
7. Taza – Stone Ground: time for some USA bars now. This Taza was thrown in more for the sensation for its tradition inspired production by stone grounding, delivering the chocolate much rougher than the creamy and silky bars. Taza tries to get closer to some traditional approach of bar making, and though taste was pretty ok, resulting in a different, but generally less appreciated sensation.
8. Amano “Montanya” Lt Edition. Ah, up for some finely handcrafted American stuff, where a lot of good things are going on right now. I liked it a lot again, Amano bars have a very upfront sensation and this one makes me want to explore the complex finishings once more, again: fruits, nuts, spices are all there.
9. Amano Jembrana. A milk bar to close the evening, nice and different from the supermarket milks off course, but not mind blowing to me. (The Michel Cluizel milks are stunning I think)

Although I’ve been munching and tasting a lot of bars myself, this tasting with SeventyPercent really was pushing all of our senses forward: looking, rubbing, smelling, snapping, munching, melting, smacking, … The more you put effort in your tasting, the more pleasure you return yourself. Regardless of all I know to date, I still picked up a lot of new things from this intimate event and… I hope the have the same experiences soon for you too!