Some 8 or 9 years ago, when I only just started chasing dark cacao bars, I was still focusing on at how much percentage the bar came. In my mind, the more cacao, the better so the hunt was open to find that 100% cacao bar.
Soon after, I spent some time in Paris and jumped into every chocolate store I ran across, and with so many chocolatiers in that beloved city, it didn’t take much time to find a 100% pure cacao bar. I don’t remember the name of the shop, but I’ll never forget that first bite:
I was actually disappointed, the taste of it was very much like putting black sand in your mouth, the cacao crawled like raw oil from tooth to tooth, and rather than tasting something, this 100% cacaobar had the effect of 7 espresso’s on me!
Loaded on this cacao energy boost, I continued my quest and that’s when I discovered a small store from Michel Cluizel in 201, rue Saint-Honoré. I hadn’t heard of him before, but the wide range of origin bars drew my attention. And Cluizel had this very tiny bar: the “Noir Infini” at 99%, 30 grams.
This one tasted a whole lot different. You had to let the cacao do its work while keeping it long enough in your mouth, but you actually could enjoy some of the deepest cacao aromes. The bar was unsweetened, bitter, very bitter, but delivered a pleasant and powerfull tasting experience.
When these 2 tasting experiences were rather extreme, they were also very different. The most important thing I’ve learned in those days in Paris was that cacao comes with a lot of expertise, and offers many many experiments with varieties of blends, beans, roastings, percentages etc. and that it takes a lot of craftsmanship to build a well balanced dark bar.
