Impact
The dearness of it all: Chocolate & Black Truffle (Tuber melonosporum), add salt.
King of the fungi... the stuff of gunfights, thefts, fraud, mysterious disappearances of hogs & highly trained dogs.
Brillat-Savarin called truffles the kitchen diamond & this bar just cuts them into pulverized dust, then hydrolized in an acid bath in a kind of culinary 'blood diamonds’.
King of the fungi... the stuff of gunfights, thefts, fraud, mysterious disappearances of hogs & highly trained dogs.
Brillat-Savarin called truffles the kitchen diamond & this bar just cuts them into pulverized dust, then hydrolized in an acid bath in a kind of culinary 'blood diamonds’.
Appearance 4.6 / 5
| Color: | pale orange-brown |
| Surface: | indistinguishable front lets off no signs of truffles & salt perforating the backside as so much wood pulp & crystal would |
| Temper: | dim vinyl veneer |
| Snap: | double-nosed cracker barrel; solid edge |
Aroma 9.2 / 10
scary good sorcery: almost selfsame to Mast’s unflavored Mad 72 except for the add’n of balsam wood & balsamic for a sweet-meat sauce + more pronoounced cocoa -> opens up pungent earth & things really get witchy on black fungi
Mouthfeel 11.4 / 15
| Texture: | nano-crystals against soft-butter |
| Melt: | initially tight then the slipknot releases fast; astringent grip |
Flavor 32.9 / 50
salt constellation -> competing choc & black truffle dual it out -> terrific truffle clarity carries the progression laden w/ mushroom until grousing sour cacáo drowns it, sparing bloody little in its path, incl sodium -> stringent finish eventually buried in strong oak & cocoa-limestone after-FXs
Quality 12.3 / 20
Once again Mike & Rick Mast clicking on the flavors, in this case as enfants terribles.
Fantastic beginning falls prey to a flawed but well-intended blueprint: deploying Madagascar’s brightness to counter those earthen ground truffles which pose a natural choice due to their own inherent chocolate flavor. (Unclear whether these hail from their ancestral grounds in & around Var & Perigord, France, or of the “summer variety” which come from Northwest USA).
An inauspicious cacáo crop of ripping acidity (seen in full view from Mast’s Mad 72%) offers far too much contrast, compounded by ham-handed blatancy with the truffles / salt, & the whole contrivance clashing about with the dexterity of a truffle hog trying to play drums by mostly hitting cymbals.
Just about any other origin at the moment (save for Ecuador) would complement & harmonize this to a greater degree.
A bar best suited for jaded souls who’ve had enough of the purist chocolate pursuit & need to head in a renewed direction: pairing cacáo with anything & everything they can get their mitts on like stinking cheese & fat salamis between swigs of Bordeaux.
ING: cacáo, sugar, sea salt, black truffles
Reviewed October 2010
Fantastic beginning falls prey to a flawed but well-intended blueprint: deploying Madagascar’s brightness to counter those earthen ground truffles which pose a natural choice due to their own inherent chocolate flavor. (Unclear whether these hail from their ancestral grounds in & around Var & Perigord, France, or of the “summer variety” which come from Northwest USA).
An inauspicious cacáo crop of ripping acidity (seen in full view from Mast’s Mad 72%) offers far too much contrast, compounded by ham-handed blatancy with the truffles / salt, & the whole contrivance clashing about with the dexterity of a truffle hog trying to play drums by mostly hitting cymbals.
Just about any other origin at the moment (save for Ecuador) would complement & harmonize this to a greater degree.
A bar best suited for jaded souls who’ve had enough of the purist chocolate pursuit & need to head in a renewed direction: pairing cacáo with anything & everything they can get their mitts on like stinking cheese & fat salamis between swigs of Bordeaux.
ING: cacáo, sugar, sea salt, black truffles
Reviewed October 2010