Legast - Guayas Équateur - 80%
Orange blossom water, speculoos and cinnamon, with a little touch of woody butter at the end. A dense chocolate, which melts slowly in the mouth, with a texture that lacks a little smoothness.
Galletti - Sweed - Organic Hemp Seeds
A box with cannabis leaves. An evocative name - sweed. But don’t worry: there’s nothing mind-blowing about this Galletti chocolate. The hemp seeds do give a unique bitter aftertaste to each bite… but I can’t say it’s pleasant. As for the chocolate, it’s not particularly remarkable.
Mindo Chocolate - 70% Rustico
Mindo chocolate, as you may have noticed, is among my favorites. Powerful and fine, its signature is recognizable at first bite. In this “rustic” bar, the cocoa is stone ground, hand tempered, and the sugar crystals are whole. It is especially in the texture that we notice the difference: much less smooth, this bar melts less pleasantly in the mouth. You have to wait for the sugar crystals to crunch under the tooth so that they soften the bitterness of the cocoa that coats them. An interesting chocolate, obviously unique, and a welcome and well-tried variation for Mindo. But it clearly doesn’t replace their best chocolates.
Pacari - Cuzco Salt & Nibs - 60% Cacao
Another inspired mix from Pacari. Salt in chocolate is a classic: it brings out certain aspects of the chocolate and shifts its balance. It becomes rounder, leaning more toward caramel notes. The salt also brings a peanut-like accent, oddly reminding me of an Oh Henry! candy bar. The little cocoa nibs mostly add a bit of unpredictability when you bite into the crunchy bits: will it be a salt crystal or a fragment of cocoa bean?
Pacari - Pimenton de la vera - 60% Cacao
Who ever thought of mixing paprika and chocolate? The result is quite surprising. First of all, it is the smoky, rich paprika that takes center stage, quietly softened by a chocolate that balances and structures the whole. Clearly, in this chocolate, the emphasis is put on the spice. It is not with this bar that we will appreciate the cocoa arriba. But Pacari dares, and dares well.