Impact
A barking violet of a slick buttered she-wolf, ala “sisters” Amala & Kamala, the feral-children nurtured & raised by a family of wolves in a cave near Midnapor, India before being discovered by Fr. Joseph Singh who chronicled their life stories, publishing the diary in 1966, which describes a den “whose nature was so ferocious & affection so sublime.” Proof-positive dolphins & dogs are man’s best friends... next to chocolate like this.
Appearance 4.9 / 5
| Color: | mahogany struck w/ purple (huh???) |
| Surface: | clean slate |
| Temper: | quiet triboluminescence |
| Snap: | sharp, right at the edge of brittle (& bloom) |
Aroma 8.8 / 10
feral twins cocoa & coconut lost in a forest of wet wood; aerates to the shock of all chocolate – candied African violet & lilac! (no kidding, in Ivory Coast... when did lilacs last in the backyard bloom there? Never [apologies to Walt Whitman])
Mouthfeel 12.3 / 15
| Texture: | viscous |
| Melt: | some stiff butter |
Flavor 45.4 / 50
chocolate bang right off -> stunning background flowers originally picked up in the aroma... sprinkled w/ black pepper tracer atop mounds of classic earth chocolate -> tree bark howling in the distance under faint star anise
Quality 17.6 / 20
Ivory Coast, where did you get that purple (color, scent, & flavor)? Imported, naturally, at some level. Perhaps from Cameroon whose beans often find their way into jute sacks packed in nearby Ivory Coast & Ghana. By the 20th century Cameroon boasted the most diverse collection of cacáo varieties in all of Africa, including transplants from Ecuador, Venezuela, & Colombia which may explain & account for the floral panache here.
In the end, this is still a West African Amelonado conveying a predominantly one-dimensional profile though deceptively complexed within intriguing anthocyanins creeping into the mix (&/or crop since cacáo, like all life, continues to change constantly). What was once a distressed & disrespected origin now has some purple power in the beans’ genes besides just unleashing the beast of old. With Ecuador’s fabled & florid Nacional in decline, maybe humble Ivory Coast, yes, Ivory Coast will become cacáo’s chemical florist... here covered in butter – the French fetish; 73% fools of a higher percentage than actuality – giving this bar a sleek elegance & cerebral demeanor in a kind of forced housetraining when it really wants to run more wild on all fours.
ING: cacáo, sugar, lecithin
In the end, this is still a West African Amelonado conveying a predominantly one-dimensional profile though deceptively complexed within intriguing anthocyanins creeping into the mix (&/or crop since cacáo, like all life, continues to change constantly). What was once a distressed & disrespected origin now has some purple power in the beans’ genes besides just unleashing the beast of old. With Ecuador’s fabled & florid Nacional in decline, maybe humble Ivory Coast, yes, Ivory Coast will become cacáo’s chemical florist... here covered in butter – the French fetish; 73% fools of a higher percentage than actuality – giving this bar a sleek elegance & cerebral demeanor in a kind of forced housetraining when it really wants to run more wild on all fours.
ING: cacáo, sugar, lecithin