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Info Details
Country Venezuela   
Type White Chocolate   
Strain Carenero   (Criollo/Trinitario Hybrid)
Source Venezuela   
Flavor Naked   (w/ Fruits/Flowers)
Style Classic      (Old School)
lo
med
hi
CQ
Sweetness
Acidity
Bitterness
Roast
Intensity
Complexity
Structure
Length
Impact
Aretha may be Queen but this is the one & only White-Souled Goddess... Icoa*. Springs of pure milk whiter than snow flowing thru streams & honey dripping from hives... the nectar of bees, liquid gold in the sunlight – white cacáo. As ancient Egyptians practiced, the dead can drink the smell of it. Song of Songs / Song of Solomon is a tribute to Astarte &, by extension, Icoa - her New World incarnation. As from that Bibilical land of milk & honey, plain & simple, as in the beginning the ending - ouroboros style - with fleeting deep chocolate cognates. So powerful in its own right it can make some dark chocolates its bitch, or as Prof. Steve Almond believes, maybe butter is the high point of Western culinary achievement afterall.

Woman of the River, Armando Reverón (1939)

[*Christened by Marìcel Presilla, adored by American aborigines because of her beauty, purity, & spirituality; perished crossing Lake Maracaibo enroute to marrying a chieftain, thus became protector of river & lake travelers. (Those raised on waterways know how placid, then tempestuous, they can be.) Harkens to the Mesoamerican myth of the Tall Girl conceived under a cacáo tree to embody water in a lake functioning as the navel of the world which the rain gods - called Chacs - drink & carry to the skies & eventually return to the fields in the form of her tears.]
Appearance   5 / 5
Color: amber ivory regalia (a shade that separates it from the commercial bleached variety but still white enough to wonder if it too received some solvents)
Surface: immaculate
Temper: surprisingly radiant for white
Snap: well-voiced silence
Aroma   9.5 / 10
remarkably buttered ‘n toasted macadamia & almonds -> just a touch vanilla for support -> sweet scent of white sugar crystals over roses & cream -> above all, unmistakable / undeniable cacáo butter
Mouthfeel   14.4 / 15
Texture: powderful... ever yielding... turns lusciously round
Melt: icy, then velvet ropes of micronized texture part like frothing white crests of the Red Sea & faster than most
Flavor   46.1 / 50
the real thing, just from the long end of the spectrum – cacáo butter -> macadamia -> cream substream -> alights lemon mist -> -> light peaches -> golden honey tones -> a single burgeoning bud, in the upper firmament reaching the symbolic unknown, the possible impossible: automagical dark chocolate enharmonics -> end w/ the ultimate cinamon-frosting kiss
Quality   19 / 20
Subtlety, very delicatia/fluid yet solidly rooted in cacáo thanks to being undeordorized & untreated by alkalis or steam cleaning (though, again, its easy-on-the-eyes color + extra-delicate profile suggest a modified treatment unless the quality of Carenero oil inheres this characteristic naturally), as well as a judicious roast so milk is subdued though its influence always felt without the milky, overly sweet crutches other mass produced whites display. Perfectly proportioned butter / sugar, lovingly lapping each other. Vanilla adds depth & prevents an all-out white-out blizzard.

In the White World there’s Icoa Cacáo... inviting even the most contemptuous Dark chocomane... & the rest of the pack stands back at a remote distant... far from view... with rare exceptions (Vestri’s Bianco).

ING: sugar, cacáo butter, dry whole & skim milk, soy lecithin, vanilla

  

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