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Report: Choqoa Tasting Event 10.2

By on March 3, 2010 in Reviews, Tastings & Events

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.

Choqoa Chocolate Tasting Events
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…

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Report: The 2nd Choqoa Tasting Event

By on December 11, 2009 in On Chocolate & Cacao, Tastings & Events

The second ‘official’ Choqoa Tasting event yesterday in Antwerp was a great fun chocolate celebration. We were with a group of 16 enthusiast people; friends bringing their own friends, and even an older couple who got the Tasting Event as a birthday gift from their daughter: what a great surprise! And also my chocolate buddy Sofie ‘Chocolaterie’ from Barry Callebaut, happily joined this event.

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Learnings from previous sessions made me make a selection with bigger care and offer a broader variety of cacao experiences. I also therefore bought some Domori and found myself a bunch of bars I hadn’t taste myself yet: Zotter, Pacari, and Bouga.
I started with a small introduction into cacao trees and pods, the bean-to-bar process, and to all delight Sofie from Callebaut passionately helped explain into detail the various steps, with good interaction from the crowd.

Off to the tasting! I projected the Amano tasting wheel in the screen to give guidance to the tasting, and people really enjoyed discovering such a chocolate sensations. This time I had a good variety that really added value to the tasting experience and was more than appreciated. It was pleasurable to see people taking chocolate to the next level! Everybody shared his impressions so the atmosphere was pretty comfortable. Halfway already people giggled and said they started to feel the chocolate raising to their brain, giving them the cacao ‘high’ :) Yes it’s positive magic.

All in all we had 10 different chocolates, list & details are below, and everybody really said to have enjoyed, and even would return another time! Everybody happily took their 2 included bars home, bought some more even to continue sharing the passion.
I’m already looking forward to the next event, you’re all invited to join Choqoa!

Read on for details of all the tasted bars!

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Two Days of Chocolate: a London tour

By on September 27, 2009 in On Chocolate & Cacao, Trips

So here’s a post on my 2 day chocolate tour in London. I initially went to attend the monthly tasting event with Martin Christy and Steven from the website www.seventypercent.com, and grabbed the opportunity have a broader look at the London chocolate offering.
I had two goals: first was mainly looking at the artisan origin bar offering in the city, and second idea was to visit the best chocolatiers in town and look at their position to working with ‘real chocolate’.

(This post is about the tour, tasting reviews of bought bars follow as I eat them;-))

Day1. Chocolatiers and Gourmet Food departments

Whole Foods Market
First stop was the Whole Foods Market main store on Kensington High St. Beware, if you are a foodie, stay away from this place, it’s too dangerous for your credit! The overall offering is awesome, but also the chocolate section included almost all the high-end Valrhona origins, and the vast collection of Pralus was a treasure discovered.

Two Days of Chocolate: a London tour

Artisan du Chocolat
Next I tubed to Bayswater for the newest store of Artisan du Chocolat on Westbourne Grove. All of their clean white fashionable stores show a miniature conching machine. They say to make their own bars, but probably step into the process halfway. The shop staff was very friendly and though for sure I share little with the daily visitor profile, they were eager to engage a conversation.
We tasted some bars sampling very different flavors, chocolates, and caramels. I must say the ganache with red wine filling was very pretty, though I missed a tobacco one. An enthusiast customer even joined the talk and charmingly confessed discovering the Artisan du Chocolat chocolates scattered her Neuhaus addiction in favor of this “so much better” chocolatier :)
At a moment the friendly staff even tried to call the retail manager to give me a personal tasting session, unfortunately our agenda’s didn’t match. I left the shop with some of the origin bars: Bali, Madagascar, Brazil Rio Doce.

Melt Chocolates
Since both staff of Artisan and Martin from seventypercent.com suggested Melt Chocolates, I walked down the road for short peek at the Melt store.  Located in charming Nothing Hill in a small house, the atmosphere was very open, with a kitchen in the back for live chocolate making. Here too staff was friendly and liked to share their story, however their concern to chocolate bars was less obsessed as mine, and their focus is a more open kitchen chef-like approach to chocolate creations.
What I found was nice were the handwritten manuals for each creations, which also mentioned at what time of the day the chocs were best savourated.

The Chocolate Society
Next and last on the ‘chocolatier’ list was The Chocolate Society in Westminster, near Sloane. The brand and idea was founded by Chantal Coady in close collaboration with Valrhona, but now operates more independently. Given that background off course the whole Valrhona bar range was available.
I had a chat with the sales rep on how and what people buy in chocolates as opposed to bars. She confirmed earlier suppositions where people are more interested in bars, especially dark ones, but that for the majority the desire for health overtakes the curiosity for true tastes.
Another nice one liner was the idea that chocolates are bought for others, while bars are being kept for oneself. There was one customer who actually bought all of the yearly origin editions (i.e. the Gran Couva, Palmira and Ampamakia), kept them in a wine cooler, and every year he compared the new release with all of the previous ones, dating back to 2001!
With that in mind, I couldn’t resist buying the gorgeous looking limited wooden box selection from 2008 to follow his example. My Varlhona series only date back to 2005… :-)

Two Days of Chocolate: a London tour

Harvey Nichols & Harrods
From The Chocolate Society I walked back to posh Sloan Square and took Sloane Street towards the Harvey Nichols and Harrods food departments. Harvey Nichols had a nice set Amedei available, including a fresh batch of the CHUAO, and the Tavoletta series. Valrhona again too, they are really actively marketing their way on the London chocolate shelves. Next to that was a lot of candy though.
Harrods was much more on ‘Belgian’ chocolates than on bars, with a rather limited offer on the latter, which was disappointing for such an institute, but then again.

I guessed that was enough for one day. I still had to spare some energy for the real goal: the chocolate tasting event later that evening…

Day 2. Kew Gardens & Amedei-day with William Curley and Selfridges

Second day in London was a very different one. I traded London city for Richmond, strolling down to the large botanical KEW Gardens and UK’s best chocolatier.

KEW Gardens
Background story goes that one of my tweets on ‘cacao genealogy’ got tracked and answered by a Twitter user studying genealogy. She knew about KEW Gardens having ‘Theobroma Cacao’ plants, so that’s how I found out actually. And now being in London, I never was so close to see a real-life cacao tree living outside of the comfortable 20° equator habitat. It’s such a funny and sexy plant actually, and the one in KEW Garden’s special greenhouses was a very young example though, with others being in nursery that day.

Two Days of Chocolate: a London tour

William Curley
Next stop in the neighborhood was the shop of William Curley, (one of) the UK’s best chocolatiers, who explicitly traded Valrhona couverture for Amedei chocolate in order to make his stunning, award winning creations from the most precious source materials. Upon entering the small store, a sublime smell of chocolate crawled my senses as in none of the other stores. Wow.
The staff here was very friendly and we had a nice chat on chocolate, passion and hard labour, while sipping from a delicious Hot Chocolate made with Amedei Toscano Black 70 :)   It was fascinating to listen to how William Curley and Amedei work together on some levels, where also the Amedei related foodie family supplies some of the other ‘best in class’ materials used in Curley’s chocolates.
It’s the only shop where I eventually did buy some of these award winning ‘chocolates’!

Selfridges Food
Last stop of my 2 day visit was back at Selfridges, just to check one last time… one more time… And Yes!… There was a new “San Jose Del Tambo 70%” bar from Askinosie which I hadn’t spotted last time at Selfridges. Even ‘worse’ was to find Amedei relaunched their whole collection, added completely new origin bars on top of that, and did a really beautiful packaging redesign. And next to all this, I finally found the famous Amedei ‘9’, a masterblend of 9 origins.
What else did a guy like me need to spend the last pounds… :-D

Two Days of Chocolate: a London tour

The London chocolate scene is in a vibrant era for sure. With branches like iconic Rococo and new talent Paul A Young left unvisited, I should probably have tried & tasted more chocolatiers’ creations (like truffles and ganaches), and maybe be a little less obsessed by bars at such moments.
However the world of origin Grand Cru bars remains a very special one that doesn’t often overlap the one of a chocolatier, and world’s best cacao bars currently feel more comfortable at the luxury food shelves.

I surely had a great time in London and took back a lot of experience! If there’s something you’d like to know more about, just comment or mail me.
(Some more pic from the London Tour on my Flickr set)

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

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!