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Info Details
Country Hungary   
Type Dark   (84%; Lot S3901)
Strain Sur del Lago   
Source Venezuela   
Flavor Crossover   (into seafood)
Style New School      
lo
med
hi
CQ
Sweetness
Acidity
Bitterness
Roast
Intensity
Complexity
Structure
Length
Impact
Choctopussy... wraps its tentacles around every orifice & floods them with deep cocoa.
Appearance   4.8 / 5
Color: riverbed brown
Surface: ornate mold
Temper: soft glaze
Snap: high swish
Aroma   8.7 / 10
elemental
air, cane, bark & a tremendously sweet warm-spot (spiced & stewed sapote)
balloons a strawberry
Mouthfeel   12 / 15
Texture: brittle, slightly dry til the saliva pumps hydrate the flow
Melt: thin grip (astringency)
Flavor   46.3 / 50
8 tentacles:
1. chocolate-
2. -dirt bomb;
3. mamey sapote (skin included);
4. starch flour;
5. lone bitter at the back;
6. another fruit (sea grape) tries to jerk out of the cocoa mud (no luck);
7. instead rolls over to spices (cardamom, cinnamon, + light gingerbread hatched from earlier flour);
8. closes on a rarity: seafood (octopus & oyster labia!) from a possible trimethylamine trace
Quality   18.1 / 20
An unforeseen & untasted 1st encounter: chocolate octopus. The only bar(s) that come close are Adi's early releases which contained a deep ocean coral sense.

Strange considering the finery behind this varietal from the surrounds of Lake Maracaibo (technically a lagoon). Whatever the body of water status, it might as well contain octopus which somehow swam in this chocolate & left a watermark trace in its wake.

Usually starting around this percentage & up, a bar plows into the dirt around a mushroom patch. Very little of that here... the genes & the terra too benign. Instead this performs a back-flip into the sea (probably due to some issue[s] related to post-harvest / storage). Hardly surprising from a Venzy, for Mantuano hints as much.

Other than Domori's 100, Rózsavölgyi issues this, the highest-percentage sweetened SdL to date.

84% pitched just about right... at the edge of a fruit burst on one side & a bitter beatdown on the other -- too little sugar to catalyze the former, while added cocoa butter & a deep conche prevent the latter (+ its aforementioned delicate nature).

Thus precariously equipoised & an instant party fav at a recent Brooklyn bar-b-q hosted by an esteemed figure in the field. (Perhaps because this individual stays offline without any annoying web presence -- my, how enviable; fear not, C-spotters®, annoyance being in the very DNA of this site, to check the cocoa-gurus if nothing else.) It convened a broad cross-spectrum of choc types -- from novices to experienced. Basically the same for what passes, in the words of one such self-described "chocolate expert & judge", at chocolate award shows these days, the beauty of which serves less as an educational tool & more as an empowerment device. All valid. So let's just call this the 1st Bklyn Choc Award winner.

Several here form a fan club for a local barsmith (who shall remain anonymous in the spirit of kindness & deference to these abused residents denuded of their hard-earned income at the rate of $8 to $12 a bar after grinding away in front of monitors for tumblr & 4 Sq.) & sat spent, beside themselves, as this embarrassed their hero. Oh, well, so much for Zsolt Szabad of Rózsavölgyi being a respectful visitor.

Intelligently / deftly formulated. As such, he really threads the needle in skillfully poising this bar on a fragile tip.

INGREDIENTS: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter

Reviewed June 6, 2013

  

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