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Noir Papouasie Nouvelle Guinee

by A. Morin
Info Details
Country France   
Type Dark   (70%; Batch Date 6/6/12)
Strain Hybrid   (with probable Criollo germplasm)
Source Papua New Guinea   
Flavor Crossover   
Style Classic      
lo
med
hi
CQ
Sweetness
Acidity
Bitterness
Roast
Intensity
Complexity
Structure
Length
Impact
Henri Matisse wisely abandoned his law career after taking up painting during an illness in 1890. His vivid use of primary color as a structural element blew Impressionism off its watery-dreamy canvases, rocking it with more Fauvist thunder.

So much so that Matisse's then-controversial Nu Bleu created a sensation at the pivotal 1913 Armory Show in NYC that it was burned in effigy.

This bar also smacks of being burned... twice (once during the drying process & again during the roasting stage).

But where the smoked-tainted seeds of Cravve's bar from neighboring Madagascar obscure & distort, make no mistake: Morin becomes Matisse-like with chocolate & cocoa butter as his acrylics & oils for paint.

Deligious (a portemanteau of 'delicious' & 'religious') & dangerously close to the List of Banned Words.

Nu Bleu, Henri Matisse, 1907
Appearance   3.9 / 5
Color: medium brown with milky cast
Surface: uneven pour
Temper: opaque; small gleam in the eye
Snap: cliff hanger
Aroma   7.8 / 10
wood-burning oven with leather straps for hinges on the door
tea & tobacco in the environs -> mossy greens
cinnamon top
hmmm, fools of smoke from Java & the leguminous vines of Ecuador
Mouthfeel   14.2 / 15
Texture: corpulent (heavy body / paste)
Melt: great spread across the pal (palate)
Flavor   46 / 50
re-confirms Aroma -- PNG & Indonesia share both a landmass together & a need for controlled-smoke (sometimes uncontrolled) in drying their cacáo seeds; & that classic tell-tale PNG peat moss translate as Ecuadorian leguminous plants
instant chocolate lime -> barrel rolls into tobacco-tea & nuts with a smoke entrail (candle nut -- Aleurites moluccana) -> the 3 (lime / tea / nuts) suspend like this... thru peat moss, then betel leaf -> thickens to what begins as a peanut legume unto full onset hazelnut butter cut by persistent acidity (a neo-gianduja with satsuma berries) -> leatherback finish
Quality   17.8 / 20
A couple seasons ago Alan McClure of Patric Chocolate leveraged Madagascan cacáo's inherent jelly character by tossing in some peanut butter. He cleverly dubbed the confection PBJ. People in the chocosphere went all OMG / WTFudge over it.

Ingenious for sure but he cheated in a sense (adding peanuts) -- an unforgivable heresy to the New Puritans who preach 'cacáo 'n sugar' only & nothing else in their bar formulations.

Notwithstanding the additional cocoa butter & lecithin, which those same Puritans shall rail against, this bar is au natural in Morin's French vernacular. A genuine chocolate that goes beyond PBJ with a Euro spin (thanks to its intrinsic -- i.e., none added -- hazelnut tones) into a Nutella 'n Jam spread. This cacáo's acidity brings & keeps it all together throughout the length, masterfully unifying the mani-un-folding flavors in the progression.

So while Tcho runs around the 4-corners of the globe to tweak individual cacáo-origins for its separate "Fruity" bars, "Nutty" bars & "Chocolaty" bars, Morin pulls a recombinant ensemble of 'em all from a single source -- PNG.

Texture befitting the Flav Profile -- dives right into oral sex territory -- then serves up the ultimate coup de grace.

In other words, damn the Puritans, this is pure pornographic genius.

INGREDIENTS: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, lecithin

Reviewed February 4, 2013

  

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