República del Cacao° Provincia Manabi 75%

1.76oz (50g) bar

Ingredients: Cacao liquor, sugar, cacao butter, soy lecithin

7g sugar/25g serving (28% by wt.)

Corporate Info: Most of the search results I'm finding are commercial or other reviews like mine, so I'll have to rely on República del Cacao's convoluted website. Since it's confusing I'm going to keep it short, and if you really want to learn more, feel free to peruse the site yourself. In brief, República del Cacao is a young company focusing on Ecuadorian cacao, which it claims to be particularly floral and fruity. The website seems to indicate that República del Cacao produces only three products, one from each of three provinces.

Today's bar is the one from Manabi Province. The site offers no photo of the packaging or description of the ingredients, instead providing a “flavor description map,” which gives you a pretty good idea of República del Cacao's approach to its chocolate (or at least its marketing). My questions are pretty obvious, then: Is this chocolate extra floral and fruity, and does the flavor map reflect my experience?

Appearance: A blocky little bar in a pleasant, warm brown with a hint of orange and a very slight gloss.

Smell: Fresh, beany, juicy.

Taste: Texture has some chew, in this case a little chalky, resisting the teeth and breaking down into pieces, then very thick and mouth-coating. Flavor-wise, I totally get floral—not in any weird way, just light and fragrant. I don't taste as much fruit, unless we're talking something tropical, the sort with a perfumey taste. Sweet enough, and with very little sour or bitter taste, and a slightly bitter aftertaste. Also, with the first piece I started chewing, I got a hint of tobacco.

Let's check out the flavor map, which I'm simplifying here:

• High: “Chocolate” and “chocolate aroma.” These probably correspond to what I thought of as “beany.” 
• Medium: Sweetness and “chocolate linger.” Sure. 
• Low: Bitter, fluidness, floral, smoothness, floral linger, fruity, acidity, and “cooling.” While I did consider this fairly floral, otherwise these jibe with my impressions of both flavor and texture. 
• Very low: Lingering flavors in general (including bitter, which I did taste a little) as well as “roasted” and “astringency.”

Actually, this flavor map does mostly describe my experience in eating the Manabi Province bar, which is kind of a fun exercise. I'm not sure I love the bar itself, but it certainly isn't bad; this is one of those personal preference things.

Conclusion: República del Cacao° Provincia Manabi 75% is beany and, to my mind, floral, but the real fun is seeing to what extent my experience eating it compares to the company's description. I guess the website is helpful after all!

Sahagún Palomitapapá

25g/0.9oz bar (self-weighed)

Ingredients: Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, corn, soy oil, fleur de sel, chile (cocoa is Ecuadorian)

Corporate Info: Sahagún (or, judging by the website, Sahagun) is a tiny little company that currently makes a few barks, a couple filled confections, and one coffee flavored bar. I must have bought funky little Palomitapapá at Cacao in Portland, drawn in by the “exploded corn” in the ingredients list. (Note: I can only find this bar as part of a bark three-pack, which I'm guessing means the company switches up its flavors from time to time.) If you're interested in Sahagún's South American names and ingredients, philosophy, or future plans, you can read an interview with owner Elizabeth Montes here.

Appearance: Nubbly and barky, with exposed salt crystals on top.

Smell: Not too much, actually.

Taste: First chile, more than I was expecting but not to a give-me-a-glass-of-water extent. Then salt, then the relatively subtle flavor and not at all subtle texture of the corn kernels, which are more chewy-crunchy than puffy like popcorn. The spiciness lingers, and the kernels get stuck in my teeth, and all in all the chocolate is just a flavor element rather than the headliner here. Hm, there's not a lot to say except that this is a fun experience if you're into the ingredients.

Conclusion: Sahagún Palomitapapá is fun if you want chile, crunchy corn, and salt with your chocolate.

Pacari Chocolate Covered Cacao Beans

90g (3.17oz) box; mine contained 31 chocolate covered beans

Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, o. cane sugar, o. cocoa powder, o. sunflower lecithin

Corporate Info: Pacari Chocolate is single-origin (Ecuador), organic, and according to them, fair trade minus the certification. Most of what I'm seeing about the company is from commercial sites, so I'll just say that they sound good, in an upscale, rainforesty sort of way: Pacari offers local-origin bars from different plantations, flavored bars, chocolate covered tropical things (fruits, coffee beans, etc), and a few other earthy-crunchy-super-local items, including today's chocolate covered cacao beans dusted with cocoa powder.

Appearance: Dusty, oblong, irregular. Appealingly rugged.

Smell: Intense, sharp, with warm notes—ginger, cardamom, that kind of vibe.

Taste: In layers, what you've got is: First, a fine dusting of powder that has almost no taste; its only real effect is allowing the chocolate underneath to remain both protected and creamy, which is to my mind preferable to to the shiny, shellacked texture of some other chocolate-covered treats. Second, a medium-thin layer of creamy, tart chocolate. If you sit and savor that layer it's actually raw-tasting compared to other chocolate, but if you mostly chomp down like I am, the contrast with the cacao bean makes it seem very smooth and sweet. Finally, a large cacao bean with a papery outside and nut-textured, crunchy-crumbly inside. The bean is almost deceptively neutral flavored in its unrefined, unsweetened, low-bitterness, nutty non-intensity. I've eaten nibs that had a more distinctive, banana-tropical flavor that these beans don't, and I like these here. Very good.

Conclusion: Pacari Chocolate Covered Cacao Beans are rustic, have nice texture and flavor contrast, and are easy to keep eating. Warning: Too many can make you (me) hyperactive!

Cocanú Picasso 72% Spicy Dark Chocolate, Coconut, Ginger, and Peppers

0.8oz (25g) bar

Ingredients: Cacao, sugar, coconut, paprika, cayenne pepper, ginger

Corporate Info: I bought this bar at Cacao in Portland, and if I recall the cashier's claim correctly, tiny Cocanú is the brainchild of one of the gentlemen who works at the shop. This bar sounded interesting to me, but it's not the only one; if you're in the area, try the Pop-Rocks-studded Moonwalk and let me know what you think. Cocanú's M.O. is to create blends using chocolate from other high-end companies. The Moonwalk, for example, is made from Michel Cluizel chocolate (I'll be reviewing one of their bars soon), and includes nibs from François Pralus (see my François Pralus reviews here). The Picasso contains chocolate from a Swiss company called Felchlin that claims to maintain strong and fair relationships with its cocoa farmers, so take from that what you will. Note: According to the Cocanú website, Picasso is 70% cacao, not 72%, which I assume means the formula was changed after I bought the bar.

Appearance: A smooth, thin, slightly glossy square with a scattering of tiny bumps the size of raspberry seeds.

Smell: Sour.

Taste: Morphing. Not sour but sweet!...Oh, okay, some sour...Hm, there's the flavor: Ginger and paprika are part of a warm ensemble rather than standouts on their own...Spiciness is starting to build in the back of the throat...Small pieces of coconut are textural, with no perfumey suntan-oil scent...sweet-sour chocolate dissipates, leaving a lingering heat and a couple tiny slivers of coconut. Fun.

Conclusion: Cocanú Picasso 72% Spicy Dark Chocolate, Coconut, Ginger, and Peppers is a fun ride.

Askinosie: Three Dark Chocolates

70% San Jose Del Tambo Ingredients: Cocoa beans, sugar, cocoa butter

8g sugar/42.5g serving (in full-size bar; 18.8% by wt.)

75% Soconusco bar not currently available

77% Davao Ingredients: Cocoa beans, organic cane sugar, cocoa butter

7g sugar/42.5g serving (in full-size bar; 16.5% by wt.)

I'd never heard of Askinosie until I found these single origin mini packs at my local chocolate specialty shop. As high-end chocolate isn't cheap, I thought it might be fun to do a sort of tasting flight with these little bars, and I picked three of them more or less at random. I ended up with the following “Itty Bars”: 70% San Jose Del Tambo (Ecuador) Nibble Bar; 75% Soconusco (Mexico) Bar; and 77% Davao (Philippines) Bar. I've since looked up the various bars on Askinosie's website, though the Soconusco chocolate isn't currently available except as white chocolate.

Before I try the chocolate, who are these Askinosie people? The complex website is a bit of a pain (just try perusing the news section) and could use a copy editor, but basically the company was founded in Springfield, Missouri by ex-lawyer Shawn Askinosie, his wife, and a business partner. They try to work with the cocoa farmers in person, pay them fair wages, and share a percentage of the profits with them to encourage high quality. Aside from specialty items their chocolate is just beans and sugar—no vanilla or soy lecithin—and they try to be as organic as possible short of going through the certification process. (See the FAQ for more.) They sound like lovely people.

Back to the Itty Bars. Each gives you two wafers of plain chocolate, with the Nibble Bar having nibs on the back. Let's take them one at a time...

70% San Jose Del Tambo with nibs has an underlying tropical scent, like bananas. The texture is dense and thick, coating the mouth with cacao, and the flavor is dark with minimal sweetness, but not harsh...like bitter chocolate with some of the bitterness removed. Nibs add texture and more of that tropical banana vibe, something I've tasted in other nibs too. Aftertaste is light, tropical, and short-lived.

75% Soconusco has a minimal smell, quiet and banana-free. It's dense but not so mouth-coating, more bitter, almost like chocolate distilled to its essence: just enough sugar to get past the wince factor and on to the cacao, not especially fruity or tropical or rich, just chocolate. The aftertaste is a bit sour, but it's more like intense chocolate than free-floating acid. Overall a neat experience.

77% Davao also doesn't smell like much to me, so perhaps I'm not especially creative today. It tastes sweeter than the Soconusco, probably because it has that red wine quality, tannic but also fruity in a way that speciously reminds me of sugar. It's not berries or cherries or raisins; my co-taster says fresh currants, which I've never eaten myself, but perhaps that'll be helpful to you. Either way it's not overwhelming or off-putting, though there is a long, lingering bitter finish that isn't the most pleasant.

All in all, this was a fun way to compare three subtly varying bars. My favorite was the 75% Soconusco, though I didn't love it enough to pay for this premium chocolate. If you feel like spending a little cash, you could do worse (and support worse companies) than to pick up some of Askinosie's chocolate.

Conclusion: Askinosie's 70% San Jose Del Tambo with nibs is tropical and thick; 75% Soconusco is the essence of dark chocolate; and 77% Davao is winey and somewhat bitter.

Vintage Plantations Artisanal Chocolate 75% Dark

3.5oz (100g) bar

Ingredients: Pure cocoa mass, raw sugar cane, soy lecithin.

Unlike most bars I’ve eaten, Vintage Plantations' 75% doesn’t contain any vanilla, and as much as I like vanilla, I can’t say I taste the difference. (Perhaps I will later, as I become a more astute reviewer.) Then again, it does have a certain pure chocolatey-ness: neither gritty nor too creamy, not too sweet or too sour or too bitter. This bar is like a medium-bodied wine, not especially challenging but retaining a bit of edge and bite.

Conclusion: Vintage Plantations 75% Dark bar is a solid, strong bar, but it probably isn’t distinct enough that I would buy it again. 


[Edit: I'm not sure what happened to my photo of this bar; the one I originally had posted was the 90% bar. See the link above for a link to the photo on the Vintage Plantations site.]