Porcelana du Pérou
by Alain Ducasse
Impact
Credit Gerard Grisey from France with founding the Spectral Music genre along with fellow composer Tristan Murail. Much of Grisey’s career explores the spectrum of tone colors -- both harmonic & noise. His early 1980s composition – Les Chants de l’Amour (Songs of Love) – spends over a half-hour on what sounds of lovemaking: yips, squeals, pips, screams, yelps, slaps, sighs, grunts, groans, moans, slurps, panting, etc.
For such a relatively short life -- 52 years –- Grisey taught a remarkable number of pupils including Stéphane de Gérando, Magnus Lindberg, & Erling Wold.
This bar suggests that maybe Ducasse was one of them too... for it ghosts Porcelana Criollo.
For such a relatively short life -- 52 years –- Grisey taught a remarkable number of pupils including Stéphane de Gérando, Magnus Lindberg, & Erling Wold.
This bar suggests that maybe Ducasse was one of them too... for it ghosts Porcelana Criollo.
Appearance 4.5 / 5
| Color: | medium-light brown |
| Surface: | flush save for a pinhole |
| Temper: | poker faced |
| Snap: | depends... too many score lines & mini-portions to be definitive |
Aroma 5.7 / 10
poly-blend -- linens, cottons & esters, oh my
spiced malted grains line the way out with, strangely, a cheese whiff... just a brief pre-cursor for some butter toffee (what a transformation)
serious sticky syrup (algarrobina) amidst some grass (intriguing)
spiced malted grains line the way out with, strangely, a cheese whiff... just a brief pre-cursor for some butter toffee (what a transformation)
serious sticky syrup (algarrobina) amidst some grass (intriguing)
Mouthfeel 14.1 / 15
| Texture: | ultra-tender |
| Melt: | floetry (despite minute nib fragment) |
Flavor 27.8 / 50
promising start on golden chocolate... plain & simple -> that grassy syrup from the Aromatics intrudes & pours over unmistakable sunflower -> deteriorates off-treacle -> caustic vanilla pod burns hay & straw at the back -> fleur-de-sel just fuel-to-the-fire (less sodium & more other minerals -- calcium, magnesium, potassium) -> toasted oats, corn & other grain meal -> stringent swipe at the finish
Quality 10.6 / 20
Forget misguided parallels to Amedei's similarly sourced Blanco de Criollo. And skip both bars' probable misnomer on a couple fronts (neither Porcelana in the varietal sense nor Criollo from what can be gleaned so far -- just poltergeists, unless transplanted from the Lake Maracaibo region of Venezuela).
Conventional databases broadly classify Piura cacáo under the Nacional genotype & its white-seeded sub-variety in all likelihood a mutant that lacks the anthocyanin pigmentation gene which colors most cacáo seeds a darker hue.
Discarding the pretty names, packaging, moulding, & branding, one incidental fraction dominates this bar: the emulsifier.
Sunflower substitutes for soy lecithin to mollify concerns over allergies & GMO-soybeans. To achieve the same viscosity or fluidity in Texture requires slightly more sunflower than soy lecithin; & from the mouthfeel of this bar, Ducasse upped it beyond what's warranted. A tremendous melt for sure but, alas, at a drastic cost in flavor.
Other premium bars employ sunflower lecithin (Pacari and Duffy's the 2 more prominent ones) though none to this degree, nor to such detriment. It spoils that promising chocolate bang at the beginning; so by the midsection onward, rancid oils from sunflowers &/or vanllla cloak the backbone of any possible cacáo pedigree behind a miasma of noxious morbidity. Compounding the confabulation of woes, fleur de sel then salts it away onto a nonstop caustic burn-mark that stings well after the last stringent wipe.
Way off-point, off-flavor, off-varietal (whatever one calls it) & off-origin.
INGREDIENTS: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, sunflower lecithin, vanilla, fleur de sel
Reviewed June 13, 2013
Conventional databases broadly classify Piura cacáo under the Nacional genotype & its white-seeded sub-variety in all likelihood a mutant that lacks the anthocyanin pigmentation gene which colors most cacáo seeds a darker hue.
Discarding the pretty names, packaging, moulding, & branding, one incidental fraction dominates this bar: the emulsifier.
Sunflower substitutes for soy lecithin to mollify concerns over allergies & GMO-soybeans. To achieve the same viscosity or fluidity in Texture requires slightly more sunflower than soy lecithin; & from the mouthfeel of this bar, Ducasse upped it beyond what's warranted. A tremendous melt for sure but, alas, at a drastic cost in flavor.
Other premium bars employ sunflower lecithin (Pacari and Duffy's the 2 more prominent ones) though none to this degree, nor to such detriment. It spoils that promising chocolate bang at the beginning; so by the midsection onward, rancid oils from sunflowers &/or vanllla cloak the backbone of any possible cacáo pedigree behind a miasma of noxious morbidity. Compounding the confabulation of woes, fleur de sel then salts it away onto a nonstop caustic burn-mark that stings well after the last stringent wipe.
Way off-point, off-flavor, off-varietal (whatever one calls it) & off-origin.
INGREDIENTS: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, sunflower lecithin, vanilla, fleur de sel
Reviewed June 13, 2013