Quality: Earthy/smoky cocoa makes its way into the end picking up notes of dark roasted coffee in the finish leaving a lingering dark sugar noteīar has a natural airy balance, with complementary attributes and a firmer structure that provides lots of anchoring and good stabilityīar has good depth and there’s a good degree of dimension, complexities are well balanced and structure is consistent, expression feels honest, but is heavily influence by style of chocolate with processing encouraging softer profile and lots of balance Notes: Earthy/smoky cocoa, dark roasted coffee Quality: Open, fresh, rounded, archetypalįlavours have a long subtle length, with lasting flavour, making arcs on peaks of airy sweetness and acidity Notes: Demerara sugar, earthy/smoky cocoa, cherry pomace, cherry brandy, dark roasted coffee Notes: Demerara sugar, light muscovado, date molasses Texture: Sugar crystal, granular, rough, buttery Quality: Fragrant, cakey, soft, lightly acetic Notes: Cherry pomace, red grape, papaya, caramelised sugar Ingredients: Oraganic cacao beans, organic cane sugar Best enjoyed with darker sourdoughs, good wensleydale, fine sweet cider or sweet cream. This is one for those who like classic chocolate flavours, for those looking for something a little different or for those who like a little aeration to their flavours. In the end it’s a good mix between novelty and quality execution, it’s unrefined, but consistent, it’s expressive, but mild and balanced and it’s clearly still chocolate. It’s a fairly archetypal expression, it tastes like chocolate without being described as chocolatey and it’s almost nostalgic, not that I ever remember eating chocolate this rustic as a child. There’s initial flavours of demerara sugar that open into earthy/smoky cocoa flavours, before some fruity cherry characteristics come on with an alcoholic and dark aged tone of cherry brandy, before finally settling into some dark roasted coffee in the finish. To taste this chocolate is far softer and more balanced than I had expected, there’s a subtlety to the flavour that’s unexpected given the unrefined nature of the chocolate. Placing a piece in my mouth the chocolate is clearly unrefined, but the aeration and the granularity is very even and while rough the chocolate is also a little buttery, it’s a bit like rolling unmixed butter cream around in your mouth. Breaking off a piece reveals fragrant aromas of cherry pomace and notes of red grape and papaya before turning into caramelised sugar with a certain cakiness to it. Opening the packaging I’m presented with a round disc, with 8 segments and a glossy finish. I have tried raw cacao liquor before and I’ve tried Soma’s Old Skool Madagascan, which has similarly unrefined qualities, so I’m a little prepared as to what to expect, but I’m hoping for full flavour and honest expression over mouthfeel and balance in this particular case. This leads me to believe that not only will the expression of flavour in this bar be more individual, more honest and of a higher quality owing to the higher quality of beans being used, but that it’s also likely to be intense, acidic, fruity and well, unrefined. On top of that they have a very distinctive method of making the chocolate using traditional Mexican stone ground methods, which give a more rustic feel to the bar and the lack of refining and conching also leads to a higher retention of fruit, acidity and volatile flavours. With that said Taza chocolate only source their cocoa from Finca Elvesia and OKO Caribe in the Dominican Republic and they pay a premium price to do so. Flavoursome maybe, but rarely refined or dimensioned. My experience so far has been of a chocolate that expresses dark cocoa and earthy tones, but with a propensity for red berry notes when it’s at its best. I’ve tried a lot of chocolate from the Dominican Republic, but often from non craft chocolate makers and usually in cheap bars or at higher percentages. Once harvested these beans are shipped to Sommerville, Massachusetts to be stone ground into one of Taza’s Mexican style discs. This chocolate bar is made using cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic and is stone ground using a Mexican Molino.
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