Tag Archives: Chuao
Tasting Battle: Amedei Chuao, Porcelana vs. Valrhona & Marcolini

Tasting Battle: Amedei Chuao, Porcelana vs. Valrhona & Marcolini

by on September 15, 2009 in On Chocolate & Cacao, Reviews

A couple of days ago, we had our friends from Singapore over for dinner, and since I didn’t really had a (chocolate) dessert prepared, I decided to throw in some luxury bars for a chocolate tasting. The table was honored with Amedei Chuao, Amedei Porcelana and Valrhona Caraïbe, all from the “London Collection” and Marcolini’s “Tabasco” and “Puerto Cabello” origin bars.

We started with the Valrhona to get our palate ‘choq’ready. This 66% bar is a blended Trinitario creation, which combines a nice texture with a pleasantly bitter though and roasted taste. A powerful tone to start.

Then we headed for the beautiful Amedei Porcelana. The Amedei Porcelana his is a very rare bar, and Amedei only produce a limited amount of Porcelana chocolate each year. The boxes are even individually numbered! The texture was a first big difference with Valrhona, but the flavoring really was like a slow hike on the discovery of cacao for the palate. The bar starts only slowly to release its various characteristics from subtle fruity tones towards a real chocolaty sensation.

Such and addictive signature taste had me grab on the famous “Amedei CHUAO” without hesitation: ranked one of the world’s best bars, to some even the reference. Contrary to the Porcelana, the CHUOA doesn’t have you wait to be indulged in a sublime and overwhelming cacao sensation. Darker, stronger, more powerful, punchy, and thick on the tongue, this bar reveals how intense and complex cacao can be.

To boost the comparison vibe at the table, Marcolini joined our exploration of origin bars. Both the Tabasco and Puerto Cabello came in with very pronounced flavors, both times however so strong you would even suspect Marcolini to add in spices and herbs. After the subtle and strong explorations of cacao with Amedei, Marcolini almost only seemed focused on getting one flavor in charge, which came a bit like a deception, but it depends how you look at it probably.

Tasting Battle: Amedei Chuao, Porcelana vs. Valrhona & Marcolini

It’s an easy decision: the Amedei Porcelana and Chuao really got gold, mostly because they mastered to always keep a chocolaty undertone throughout a great palate experience, whilst staying close with the nature of cacao. They had superbly crafted taste curvatures, releasing flavors one after another.
The excitement isn’t that much in having one very particular flavor (I think this is where Marcolini focuses way too much), but Amedei crafts bars that bring the full flavor cacao experience to live, from the first moment you break a chunk until the last bit melted and swallowed along your mouth.

The London Collection feat. world’s best Amedei

The London Collection feat. world’s best Amedei

by on August 10, 2009 in On Chocolate & Cacao, Trips

Yesterday while I was spending the weekend in London I jumped in at the Selfridges Food department in Oxford St., where to my surprise I ran into a pile of Amedei bars! While a had planned to go for a chocolate tour listed with shops like Rococo, Hotel du Chocolat and others, I wasn’t expecting to find world’s best chocolate right here exactly! My London basket within minutes became definitely one of my most expensive ones ever, but happiness is priceless :)

The London Collection feat. Amedei

From Amedei I bought the big black “I Cru Collection” box, containing 36 origin napolitan tasting squares from Madagascar, Trinidad, Ecuador, Grenada, Jamaica, Venezuela.I couldn’t resist buying 2 of the Porcelana bars, and buy the Porcelana napolitan box on top, were it for the beautiful packaging design along. Also the napolitan Chuao box had to be bought, though sadly Selfridges didn’t had the bar version. Getting into the ‘shopping’ I eventually even was to weak to resist stocking a milk bar and white bar from the La Tavoletta series, on percentages of cacao which I had left aside since long to date :) And as an dessert I eventually also bought a Toscano Red, fruited bar.

From the same shelves I equally collected some long sought new Valrhona series (Caraïbe, Abinao and Jivara), with a very attractive new pack design. From the UK chocolate scene I also had the chance to collect and discover the Green & Black’s organic dark bar and get hands on the Venezuelan Black brand, aimed more at kitchen use, from which I bought the Rio Caribe and Caranero Superior.

The London Collection

Well, I huge pile of exquisite acquisitions to discover here, and I won’t reveal how much cash I pleasantly burnt, but the aim is to prepare a small intimate event for which one these bars certainly spawn lots of fun on our palates. I’ll post tasty reviews of the London bars soon for sure!

The Chocolate Secret of Ferran Adrià

The Chocolate Secret of Ferran Adrià

by on October 9, 2008 in Marketing, On Chocolate & Cacao

That was the title on the cover of a magazine. The founder of El Bulli had a chocolate secret? Even for half an interesting page I had to buy that magazine! The article eventually is a nice introduction into the world of the purest fine dark origin cacao, and breathes my observations on the evolution chocolate has gone through during the latest years.

For long the label ‘Belgium’ evoked an atmosphere of best quality chocolate, linked to the craftsmanship of artisan chocolatiers that made ‘pralines‘, chocolate shapes filled with all kinds of flavoured fillings ranging from elaborated nuts, marzipan, pastes to liquor creams. And with a bunch of world class cacao producing brands on our soil too, we sure have a heritage in chocolate that would fill more than one book. Moreover even a lot of our tourism is driven by this chocolate attitude.
However times change, and since long to me Belgium is no longer a country of dark chocolate, but one of ‘just’ sweet chocolates. This small re-interpretation of the word “chocolate” vs. “chocolates” in English implies a whole lot of differences, it are even to very different worlds. Even our most famous “praliniers” like Pierre Marcolini and Dominique Persoone have actually (very) little to do with cacao or chocolate: they all focus on pushing and experimenting with flavours under the thin chocolate umbrella.

Amedei Collection

This article in Gentleman‘s magazine appropriately puts one of the world’s top cacao brands in the spotlight: Amedei, the house of Alessio and Cecilia Tessieri. Brother and sister Tessieri build their brand after their learning period at the french master chocolatier Valrhona. For the record, Valrhona was the first chocolate brand ever to label a bar ‘Grand Cru‘. The marketing term was coined when the company launched the first single origin bar in 1986 (Guanaja 70%, a mixture from South America).
Since Tessieri left Valrhona and to take revenge for their split, they started to work from Tuscany on what became the world’s premium on chocolate, based on the finest single origin selection of Chuao and Porcelana cacaobeans. Since long Chuao is a tiny village located in the northern coastal range of Venezuela, where beans of a very rare quality are harvested. Valhrona used to be the main taker of the Chuao yields, bit through very hard negotiations and a diabolic price war, Amedei kicked Valrhona from Chuao and obtained the monopoly on the most desirable cacao beans in the world. It’s still unclear where brands like Bonnat get their Chuao beans from now for their signature bars.

In this niche of top level chocolate we also find competitors like Michel Cluizel, Domori, ScharffenBerger, Pralus and some more, but what makes them special is the fact that they work with single estate cacao, and control the process “from bean to bar”. They control the quality of each harvest, buy at the source or even run their own plantations. Secondly they do not rely on blends to maintain a stable taste pattern, but work with the yields of a single harvest. This results in a pure uncontaminated taste that allows variations in aromas depending on the harvest, just like in wine vintages. Valrhona effectively has 3 bars that are launched by single estate and by year: the Grand Couva, Palmira and Ampamakia. I’ve been buying them since 2005, and I’m looking forward to buy the 2008 edition on my trip to Paris later this year.

Valrhona. Single Estate 2007 editions of Grand Couva, Ampamakia & Palmira

For connaisseurs, the Amedei is range is estimated to be the best in the world, lauded by the french Maître Chocolatier Pierre Hermé and the bespoken Ferran Adrià, chef of the world famous El Bulli restaurant in Spain. When I checked the Wikipedia entry for Amedei, to my surprise and pleasure the picture that accompanied the article was a photo of me that I actually took for my Afficionado collection! I bite that one :)

Pralus Venezuela 75%

Pralus Venezuela 75%

by on October 3, 2008 in Reviews

Pralus is one of my favourite cacao brands. I appreciate the complexity they manage to manage to mould in a single bar, which results in a exciting tasting adventure (almost) every time. Pralus bars are also very expressive and seldom mild in taste. This also means that even within the huge cacao varieties, you can have something like a ‘brand image’, a signature taste pattern you should be able to recognize through the whole range, much like the Haute Couture creative directors manage to achieve every season for their collections. (For the record, I’ve read the chique Amedei packaging is actually designed by the Chanel house)

Pralus Venezuela 75%

The Pralus Venezuela bar is one I estimate high in my favourites range. It’s a Pralus, it’s rather rough, but moreover Venezuela is close to the roots of cacao and used to be the world’s biggest cacao producer. And not to forget Chuao, a tiny village located in the northern coastal range of Venezuela, famous for its cacao plantations where some of the finest cocoa beans in the world are produced. More on Chuao later though… let’s focus on the Venezuela bar!

I tasted this 75% single origin bar a couple of days ago with friends, and upon unwrapping the bar, the smell that was released immediately took my attention from the chat we had to the bar I had in my hands. Next to the seducing scents, the colour was wonderfully deep dark red brown. This seduction of nose and eyes only gets better with the first medium soft bite, dragging along into a complex story of various savours and sensations.

As the dark redness of this bar forebodes, slightly bitter and dark cacao tones open the bouquet with power, though a slight dusty aroma also seems to hang around. The texture is not a smooth as e.g a Valrhona but nonetheless you have a rather creamy bar while it melts away. As it gently does so, it releases smooth aromas with butter, some very light acid tones, but without betraying its blackness with always coffee, woody, and leather in the foreground. Every bite is an opportunity to concentrate on a different aspect of the taste curvature, this is definitely not a simple bar.

Pralus Venezuela 75%

My friends are totally not into dark chocolate, let alone single origin bars. However being a enthusiast cacao evangelist, I tempted them into tasting a small chunk from both the Hussel Bejofo I had already on the table, and the Pralus Venezuela, so at least they could experience the huge differences in the universe of cacao bars.

Friend B. was very surprised by the rich bouquet each of both bars offered, and spotted the differences in taste and feel right away. Funny enough he spontaneously began comparing this new experience with wine tasting, which I found very amusing and interesting, since that what this blog is all about. Taking dark single origins bars to friends, evangelise the ‘new’ chocolate and changing the ‘bitter’ prejudices into sweet ‘experiences’.