Chocolate Shops in Victoria, BC, Canada

I recently visited Victoria, British Columbia for the first time, and in my first couple hours there I spotted a tourist magazine with a cover article about Victoria-area chocolatiers! My free-form trip suddenly had a focus; I cross-referenced the chocolatiers described in the article with Yelp reviews and my ability to get around, and ended up at three shops—and, sadly, forgot to take photos. So here are my reviews of three shops, albeit in pictureless form.

Of the three shops, one is all over Canada and has a U.S. presence as well, one is a Victoria-based chain that also sells online, and one is for local patrons only, which hopefully means there's something of interest here for everyone. 

International: Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut

Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut is based out of Calgary, Alberta, was founded in 1983, and otherwise doesn't go into much depth on its site. According to Wikipedia (and the Chicago-area Bernard Callebaut site), Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut was founded by a descendent of the more famous Callebaut, he of the Belgian company that is now part of multinational Barry Callebaut. Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut currently operates under the corporate name Cococo Chocolatiers and has stores (some corporate-operated, others independently owned) all across Canada, one in the Portland, Oregon area, and one in the Chicago, Illinois area.

The store I visited in Victoria was spare, with a long confections counter and shelves for bars, bags of chocolate shavings, and other creations. I ordered about a half-dozen chocolates, including the cinnamon ginger, trio, and bernard. So how were they? Nothing blew me away, but all were pleasant, with fine molding, creamy fillings, and subtle flavors. High-end but not all that interesting, though I had no problem finishing them off. Yum.

Order Online: Rogers' Chocolates

Rogers' Chocolates is totally Victoria: It was founded in 1885 in Victoria, and Rogers' eight stores are all located in British Columbia. I visited the “heritage storefront” on tourism-friendly Government Street and found it charmingly packed with confections and boxed items in an old-fashioned, wood-paneled setting. And the chocolates? Eh, they were okay, large and too sweet, so that divorced from their setting, back in my hotel room, I ate only bites of several before deciding I'd rather spend my calories on something else. But I would return to Rogers' for the ambience, focusing my purchases on the things I expect to be big and homey, like brittle and the turtle-like “Empress Squares”. So...meh.

Locals-Only: Chocolat Chocolatiere de Victoria

Chocolat Chocolatiere de Victoria's website just says that the company was founded in the 1990s nearby, then moved to downtown Victoria in 2004. Other articles note that the chocolatier is Helene Pappas, though I also found an April 2011 obituary for a Helene Pappas, though no other articles about her death (in, say, local business news), so perhaps that Helene is a relative. Regardless, Chocolat's storefront on a busy street had a family vibe, with an older gentleman (founder? father?) speaking familiarly with two women at the counter (daughters?) and with several visitors of various ages and appearances as they walked past the counter and chatted in a hallway in the back. There was a confections counter front and center, and to the left a case of chocolate desserts and a smaller counter for serving various chocolate drinks. A long set of seats along the front window and a separate nook of bistro tables and low, cushioned seats completed the sense of Chocolat as a great coffee-shop-like place where I wished I could become a regular.

So how was the chocolate? I ended up with nearly a dozen of the intriguing-looking and -sounding confections, among them Chocolate in the Raw, a Dark Mouse, Marzipan, Rosebud, and the wasabi-infused Samurai, and mostly saved them while drinking dark, thick, milk-free Xocolatl and watching the staff wrap red boxes in preparation for Valentine's Day. I nibbled on a few chocolates and saved the rest to finish later, in my hotel room, where I tried and savored them all. Some were more to my taste than others, but I had no regrets: Chocolat's confections look varied and interesting and taste evocative, fun, and creative, and I'd love to return. Excellent.

Leysieffer Les Extra Fins Bittersweet (Edelbitter)

100g bar

Ingredients: Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla

Corporate Info: (Copied from 6/9/12; see that post for more) Leysieffer was founded in 1909 and began making chocolate truffles in 1936. The company is still family-operated, but it now includes 19 confectionary shops throughout Germany as well as a half dozen “bistros” serving cake and whatnot. And if you're really curious, you can order its products online.

Today's Bar: In addition to all the flavored bars (and other products), Leysieffer does have an assortment of plain chocolate in various cacao percentages and origins. Today's Les Extra Fins Bittersweet is a fairly plain choice: It's not single origin and, at 61% cacao, it's only slightly darker than the 55% base of its semisweet flavored bars, which I thought might make for an interesting comparison.

Appearance: A rich, reddish brown not much different from the 55%, though I do think it has more red-orange in it. It's actually a rather lovely color.

Smell: Warm, beany but with rounded edges, nothing sharp there. Comfortable.

Taste: Texture is waxy, smooth, just a tiny bit chalky. Flavor is indeed deeper than the 55%, though the sweetness hits me first, which isn't my favorite experience in general. However, once the chocolateyness catches up, it's quite nice in an accessible way, like a bittersweet chocolate chip: a touch sour, enough bitter to taste like real chocolate, nowhere near raw but still within sight of the tree—as opposed to, say, those super-smooth, creamy chocolates that taste like they sprang up on their own in a Parisian chocolaterie. This isn't anything special, but it might satisfy some people's everyday cravings.

Conclusion: Leysieffer Les Extra Fins Bittersweet (Edelbitter) fits the label of bittersweet chocolate.

Leysieffer Berry (Beeren)

100g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, dried berries (cranberries, sour cherries, blueberries), cocoa butter, soy lecithin

Corporate Info: (Copied from 6/9/12; see that post for more) Leysieffer was founded in 1909 and began making chocolate truffles in 1936. The company is still family-operated, but it now includes 19 confectionary shops throughout Germany as well as a half dozen “bistros” serving cake and whatnot. And if you're really curious, you can order its products online.

Today's Bar: Berry. Ordinarily I wouldn't have selected this from Leysieffer's more intriguing choices, because we in the U.S. see so many “mixed berry” drinks, yogurts, candies, and so on. The difference is that this bar isn't our lovely but common strawberry-raspberry-blackberry; instead, it's blueberry, which is popular here but not in chocolate; cranberry, which we mostly associate with Thanksgiving and plain “craisins”; and sour cherries, which we usually see only in pies but are very common in German jams and desserts. That hit my “novelty” button, so I went with it.

Appearance: Unlike the other Leysieffer bars I brought home, this one has large, irregular chunks visible under the chocolate on the back and revealed in cross-section.

Smell: Basically just plain chocolate, which makes sense given that the berries are intact.

Taste: Flavor is sweet chocolate plus sweet, just slightly tart berries, and texture is Leysieffer's smooth, slightly waxy base with chewy, moist chunks of whole berry; individual bites are likely to be mostly chocolate with a little fruit for additional texture and flavor. As I've said before, I think Leysieffer's 55% cacao base is a fairly ideal match for more ethereal flavors like elderflower and lavender, but here it doesn't work for me, and there's a lot of it. The dominant, sweet chocolate and rather sweet berries prevent me from appreciating the three particular fruits included here, reminding me of why I love Green & Black's cherry bar, with its darker chocolate and plentiful, sweet-sour fruit. I'd like more fruit here, but mostly this is an issue of what the eater considers “balanced”: For me, the sugar here is getting in the way of the rest of the experience, though for others it may be exactly right, making this a satisfying bar they want to return to again and again. So it goes.

Cranberry + sour cherry + blueberry + chocolate conclusion: Inconclusive, since I couldn't get past the sweetness to really appreciate the fruit.

Leysieffer Sloe (Schlehe)

100g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sloe extract, soy lecithin

Corporate Info: (Copied from 6/9/12; see that post for more) Leysieffer was founded in 1909 and began making chocolate truffles in 1936. The company is still family-operated, but it now includes 19 confectionary shops throughout Germany as well as a half dozen “bistros” serving cake and whatnot. And if you're really curious, you can order its products online.

Today's Bar: Sloe...? Before I did a little research, I knew basically nothing about sloe except for the vaguely familiar phrase “sloe gin.” Sloe, a.k.a. blackthorn, is a small tree/big shrub in the stone fruit family, and the “berries” it produces are kind of like tiny, bitter plums. You wouldn't eat sloe off the tree, but it's good for jams or to infuse liquor, that sort of thing. I didn't notice much sloe in Germany, but the plant is native to Northern Europe (among other places), whereas in North America it's nonnative and appears to be grown mainly only in the very Northeastern U.S, so it should be less surprising to find it there than here.

Appearance: Leysieffer's usual, because this is just flavored with extract.

Smell: Here's where it gets interesting! The aroma of mild chocolate is well-melded with something fragrantly fruity, sticky-moist, like a dark honey or dried-but-not-too-dried plums and cherries, the sort you bite into and find syrupy sweetness inside.

Taste: This works so well with the mild chocolate that it doesn't taste like an additive to me so much as a whole different kind of chocolate, as though these particular cocoa beans were rich and darkly fruity instead of the usual tart and bitter. Or you can think of it like many flavored truffle centers, with their orange or rum or strawberry balsamic subtle yet thoroughly incorporated. I'm having trouble describing the sloe, since it tastes rather familiar...I'm not sure why...but isn't quite like anything else, just sweet and juicy and deep, and lingering for quite a while after I finish.

Sloe + chocolate conclusion: In Leysieffer's mild base, sloe's deep, honeyed sweetness makes for a perfectly rich, mellow bar.

Leysieffer Poppy Seed (Mohn)

100g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, poppy seed, soy lecithin

Corporate Info: (Copied from 6/9/12; see that post for more) Leysieffer was founded in 1909 and began making chocolate truffles in 1936. The company is still family-operated, but it now includes 19 confectionary shops throughout Germany as well as a half dozen “bistros” serving cake and whatnot. And if you're really curious, you can order its products online.

Today's Bar: Chocolate and poppy seeds! I noticed more poppy seed in Germany than here in the US. We're not talking on pizza or anything, but anyone familiar with hamentaschen has tried poppy seed in desserts of German origin, and I saw them in the odd pastry or bagged for sale with other nuts and seeds. I don't know if Leysieffer has included them whole or ground or what, but I guess I'll find out.

Appearance: On the outside, this looks like any other Leysieffer bar, but a cross section shows tiny white flecks. I think of poppy seeds as black, so either these are magically different or it's what you get when you break one. How about that.

Smell: I think just chocolate? If there's something more there, it's not obvious to me.

Taste: Man, I don't know. It mostly just tastes like chocolate, but with a slightly gritty (not sand-like, something softer) texture. These poppy seeds are either ground/broken up or really easy to chew, leaving little bits hanging around in your mouth as an aftertaste of sorts. Not sure about any particular flavor, though my sometimes co-taster claims it “tastes like poppy seed.” “What does that mean?” [Long pause.] “I don't know, poppy seed?” Given how low-key this is—just a light texture as far as I can tell—I'm not sure why anyone would search it out. Maybe people who eat a lot of poppy seed products become sensitive to their subtle flavor, or buyers just want that texture?

Poppy seed + chocolate conclusion: Underwhelming, but fine. I'd like to try something with a higher poppy seed content, or even a filling of poppy seed paste, as perhaps that would emphasize what the ingredient has to contribute to chocolate.

Leysieffer Lavender (Lavendel)

100g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, spices, nutmeg extract, lavender extract

Corporate Info: (Copied from 6/9/12; see that post for more) Leysieffer was founded in 1909 and began making chocolate truffles in 1936. The company is still family-operated, but it now includes 19 confectionary shops throughout Germany as well as a half dozen “bistros” serving cake and whatnot. And if you're really curious, you can order its products online.

Today's Bar: Lavender, which I noted includes “spices” and nutmeg extract as well as the lavender. Interesting.

Appearance: Similar to last week, semi-glossy, very medium brown with a warm, yellow-orange undertone. Possibly half a shade lighter, or maybe not.

Smell: Huh. Definitely lavender, but not just floral, and it doesn't merely lay unmoored on top of the chocolate flavor. I never would have thought of nutmeg as a complement, but that and/or the “spices” seem to act as a bridge connecting the earthy chocolate to perfumey lavender to make it smell more complex and melded. I can't wait to see if this carries over to the taste.

Taste: Lavender sticks out first and stays there, while chocolate comes up from behind along with a warm spiciness. I can identify nutmeg, and if there are other spices I'd guess something darker and spicier—allspice or something like that—but only just a touch. As with last year's elderflower, I think this floral might not pair well with a darker, more sour or bitter chocolate, but here and with the bridge of “spices,” it actually works. A unique experience.

Lavender + chocolate conclusion: I don't know what it would be like with a different chocolate or only lavender as a flavoring, but in mild chocolate and with additional spices to connect the two flavors, lavender imparts an intriguing floral note.

Leysieffer Honey (Honig)

100g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, honey, honey oil, soy lecithin

This May I was back in Germany and again visited the small city of Osnabrück, home to Leysieffer and its interestingly-flavored bars. Last year I tried their 55% cacao with pink peppercorns, rose oil, cardamom, and elderflower, and this year I brought back five more flavored bars and one plain one. As I did then, I'm focusing on flavors that are new to me, at least as chocolate additives, so even if you can't get your hands on Leysieffer anytime soon, it might be fun to hear about these funky combinations.

Corporate Info: Leysieffer was founded in 1909 and began making chocolate truffles in 1936. The company is still family-operated, but it now includes 19 confectionary shops throughout Germany as well as a half dozen “bistros” serving cake and whatnot. And if you're really curious, you can order its products online.

Today's Bar: Honey! Germans seem to be into honey, relatively speaking—not that it's everywhere, exactly, but the typical hotel breakfast buffet spread of breads, cheese, meat, jams, and so on always includes honey of some sort, and in Cologne I walked by a store whose entire stock was honey-related. So while I didn't see a lot of honey-infused chocolate floating around, neither was I surprised to find it as a flavoring in Leysieffer's large product line. As with all the flavored bars I'm reviewing, this is in 55% cacao. Also note that the “honey oil” in the ingredients list seems to be some sort of essential oil, not a honey-dosed vegetable oil or, obviously, oil in the drug-related sense that you'll discover if you Google the phrase.

Appearance: Aside from a few bars with inclusions, Leysieffer flavored bars in 55% cacao look more or less the same, a semi-glossy, very medium brown with a warm, yellow-orange undertone.

Smell: Mild, with a light, complex sweetness.

Taste: As I knew from last year, Leysieffer's dark chocolate base is mild, smooth, and sweet, not a challenging base to the flavorings it uses. So, more importantly, what about the honey? It's not strong, but more a particular take on the sweetness common to any (not-too-dark) chocolate. Imagine several sweeteners—say, honey, maple, cane sugar (white, brown, raw, whatever), and some artificial sweetener—and how, if you mix each into a cup of coffee or yogurt, it ends up sweeter but with a slightly varied perfume, which may or may not work with the other flavors and be what you want in that moment. This bar basically tastes like a fairly sweet dark chocolate, but with a touch of the succulence of a light honey. It doesn't do anything for me, personally, but it's a rather innocuous take on flavoring chocolate.

Honey + chocolate conclusion: Fine, just a slight variation on a usual sweetish dark bar. However, Leysieffer's version uses quite a light honey, and I'd be curious to try a more robust take on the combination.

Anthon Berg Salmiak (salty licorice)

100g (3.53oz) bar
Ingredients: Fair trade cocoa mass, f.t. sugar, cocoa butter, licorice powder, ammonium chloride, glucose syrup, canola lecithin
39% sugar (labeled)

Today's licorice bar is the third and final item I brought home from New York's Sockerbit. As I mentioned, I'm slowly acquiring a taste for licorice, especially the more challenging “salty” licorice made with ammonium chloride (not the sodium chloride salt we usually use in cooking) and popular in Scandinavia. This bar includes licorice in the chocolate as well as licorice “chips” made of sugars, cocoa butter, licorice, and ammonium chloride—which is to say that both bar and chips are licorice flavored, and only the chips are salty. Huh! 

Corporate Info: (copied from 2/18/12) Denmark's Anthon Berg was founded in 1884 and is now owned by Toms International, a chocolate and candy company operating in Scandinavia and the UK (though the subsidiary site avoids mentioning Toms). Anthon Berg produces assorted chocolate items including flavored fair trade bars, chocolate-covered marzipan, and those little foil-wrapped chocolate bottles filled with branded liquor. 

Appearance: Thin, flat, semi-glossy, reddish-orangish-brown, with the lighter-colored “chips” visible under the surface. When you break it, it turns out that those “chips” are tiny, clear candy crystals. 

Smell: I don't smell licorice, which is a vastly different experience from the last and only other licorice-related chocolate I've tasted, Venchi's high-powered absinth bar. There is a faint whiff of something unusual, though, dark and rich like prunes and blackberries, but as I've said it's faint, just a slight variation on the chocolate norm. 

Taste: Weird. After having eating some intense licorice candies (other purchases from Sockerbit), I find this surprisingly subtle, if mouth-filling; I definitely know I'm eating something other than chocolate, but it's not obvious to me what that is. If you hate the flavor, maybe this would scream licorice and gross you out, but to me it just tastes kind of savory, with an only flavor-boosting saltiness that balances out the sweet of this 57% cacao bar. In the past I haven't liked bars flavored with tiny crystal candies, which never seem to give me what I want (whether that's mint or fruit or whatever), but here it's...intriguing. The licorice flavor itself is complex and not what I'm used to, not exactly sweet, salty, bitter, or sour, and for what it's worth it lingers long after the chocolate is gone. It's certainly unusual. 

Conclusion: Anthon Berg Salmiak (salty licorice) isn't at all intense, but it is really different.

Anthon Berg Lingonberry

100g (3.53oz) bar

Ingredients: Fair trade sugar, ft. cocoa mass, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, dried lingonberries, canola lecithin

47% sugar (labeled)

Today's lingonberry bar is another item I brought home from my trip to New York's Sockerbit. I've had sour, juicy lingonberries in other Northern European products (mostly jams) and thought they would be fun in a chocolate bar.

Corporate Info: Denmark's Anthon Berg was founded in 1884 and is now owned by TomsInternational, a chocolate and candy company operating in Scandinavia and the UK (though the subsidiary site avoids mentioning Toms). Anthon Berg produces assorted chocolate items including flavored fairtrade bars, chocolate-covered marzipan, and those little foil-wrapped chocolate bottles filled with branded liquor.

Appearance: Euro-style thin and flat, slightly orangey brown, semi-glossy, and stamped with Anthon Berg's A logo.

Smell: Much more chocolate than berry, light and tart.

Taste: While this is sweeter than most chocolate I eat, it actually works pretty well even for my taste buds. The chocolate is light but has sour and slightly bitter notes, so it's not super duper mild, and the lingonberries provide tiny little centers of brief sour flavor that interrupt the sweet chocolate for just a moment. Texture is firm, with good chew and those little crunchy-chewy berries to break it up. None of it is intense or challenging, but this bar is way more interesting than it might have been.

Conclusion: Anthon Berg Lingonberry is sweeter than my usual, but the decent-quality chocolate and tiny, sour lingonberries make it all work.

Marabou Premium Filled Passion Fruit

150g bar

Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa mass, vegetable oil, cocoa butter, butterfat, milk powder, passion fruit juice, banana puree, cocoa powder, whey powder, soy lecithin, flavoring

45.5g sugar/100g serving (45.5% by wt.)

During last fall's East Coast trip I traveled as light as possible, which meant I didn't have much reading material other than what presented itself along the way. In New York City that was The Village Voice, and lucky me! That particular issue was the annual Best of New York, perfect for a visitor looking to sight-see. Thus I found myself in a young, bright white, minimally-decorated Scandinavian candy store called Sockerbit. I was mostly looking for licorice, a taste I've been slowly acquiring, but while I was there I also bought three unusually-flavored chocolate bars. Admittedly, all are pretty sweet—i.e. not super-dark chocolate—but they were novel and a compact, cheap souvenir from a big, expensive city. I know they won't be dark enough for my taste, so the question here is about their flavorings. Today's is passion fruit, from a filled bar by Marabou.

Corporate Info: Marabou is indeed a Swedish brand, dating back to 1916 and started by a Norwegian who had already started a successful, identical brand in Norway called Freia. At some point the two merged, and in the early '90s they were bought by Kraft, the second largest food and drink company in the world. You're not going to find much organic, fair trade, small business, or anything else like that with this bar. Oh, well. The chocolate is still packaged under the Marabou name and the ingredients are given in Swedish, Danish, and Finnish, so hopefully I translated them correctly here!

Appearance: Big, matte, medium-light brown. The filling is a truffley sort, basically the same color as the outside and with little chunks in it.

Smell: Sweet and jelly-ish. I think I get more of the banana than the passion fruit.

Taste: Texture is soft—the outside is a little firmer than the inside, but not much—and with scattered small crispies. Flavor is sweet with low-key banana flavor, real bananas rather than banana candy flavoring. The banana lingers, though not in a bad way, rather like almost imperceptible pieces of dried banana are stuck to my teeth, so I get random bursts of banana flavor. If there's passion fruit, it just contributes to the tropical vibe rather than standing out in any way.

Conclusion: Marabou Premium Filled Passion Fruit is a big, soft, mass-market, filled bar with an interesting banana flavor.

P.S. From the next day: This makes incredibly sweet, insipid hot chocolate. Seriously, don't do it.

Mast Brothers Chocolate Hazelnuts

2.5oz bar
Ingredients: Cacao, cane sugar, hazelnuts, olive oil  

Last week I reviewed The Brooklyn Blend from Mast Brothers Chocolate, which I learned about during a visit to New York City. This week I'm tasting the other bar I brought back with me, Hazelnuts. Why did I select this one? Since I didn't have a chance to visit the company and taste its wares, I was choosing from among several flavors at a nearby store. I'd just reviewed a bunch of bars involving salt and/or almonds, I'm tired of chocolate that's spicy with no other flavor, and I'm not a huge coffee fan, but I don't get a lot of hazelnuts unless they're in European bars, and then they're usually in some sort of fancy filling. Plain old crushed hazelnuts are surprisingly novel. So there you go.

Corporate Info: (copied from 1/28/12) Mast Brothers is based in hipster-soaked Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the eponymous brothers do fit the description. The company's website doesn't go into many details about the operation itself, but it does link to articles that describe the process as bean-to-bar and at least partially organic and direct trade. (If you're really interested, follow through on those links to see photos and much more on Mast Brothers.) Reviews seem to be love-it-or-hate-it regarding the taste, prices, and aesthetic of the chocolate, and indeed a lot of the press seems to be related to its uniquely patterned packaging. Mast Brothers' products are available mostly in New York, but also in select high-end food stores around the country.

Appearance: This non-Brooklyn Blend looks different too, a little less ashy and more glossy, less orange and more purple. Neat. Oh, and the back is very prettily covered with crushed hazelnuts.

Smell: Side by side with the Brooklyn Blend, the chocolate in Hazelnuts has less of that earthy (a.k.a. dirt) and green smell and more of a subtle, straightforward fruit thing going on, in the sweet berry direction.

Taste: Fruity, bitter, and tannic—very winey, with all the flavors balanced well. Seriously, it's like drinking a full-bodied red wine here, but with more sugar, and as a total afterthought, I can't taste the hazelnuts under all that. Texture is initially crunchy, then thick and rich, so the hazelnuts don't stand out there either. You'll get no complaints from me since it's nice chocolate and the hazelnuts look lovely on the back, but otherwise I'm not sure why they're there.

Conclusion: Mast Brothers Chocolate Hazelnuts is like eating fruity red wine in quite a nice way, but after you've looked at the pretty hazelnuts on the back, you'll forget about them entirely. Oh, well.

[Update 2/4/12: Since I wrote this, Mast Brothers' website has changed and now I can't find a "where to buy" list that covers brick-and-mortar stores. I'm leaving the link in case they change it back.]

Mast Brothers Chocolate The Brooklyn Blend

2.5oz bar

Ingredients: Cacao, cane sugar

This past fall I took a long-awaited trip to the East Coast to see friends, and a buddy in New York City introduced me to Brooklyn's own Mast Brothers Chocolate. Sad to say we didn't have time to visit the company's tasting room, but I did come home with two bars, and this week I'll tackle the aptly-named Brooklyn Blend, one of a small assortment of the usual sorts of bars (spicy, coffee, salt, nut, etc.). This bar is just plain 74% chocolate, and the copy describes it as having “hints of plum, tobacco and earth.” Leaving aside the lack of an Oxford comma (it just doesn't sound right that way!), is that description borne out by my taste buds?

Corporate Info: Mast Brothers is based in hipster-soaked Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the eponymous brothers do fit the description. The company's website doesn't go into many details about the operation itself, but it does link to articles that describe the process as bean-to-bar and at least partially organic and direct trade. (If you're really interested, follow through on those links to see photos and much more on Mast Brothers.) Reviews seem to be love-it-or-hate-it regarding the taste, prices, and aesthetic of the chocolate, and indeed a lot of the press seems to be related to its uniquely patterned packaging. Mast Brothers' products are available mostly in New York, but also in select high-end food stores around the country.

Appearance: Mostly matte, and a bit pale as dark chocolate goes. (Also broken, but this happened to all the chocolate I brought back from NYC in my tightly packed suitcase.)

Smell: Pretty basic. Warm, with a nutmeg vibe and notes of caramelized raisin.

Taste: Different! Flavor is light, sweet-tart like juicy orange citrus or, sure, maybe plum. I could definitely get earthy from it. I'm not a smoker so I don't know about tobacco, but I could see something fresh and green (it doesn't say dried to me), though not smoky at all. Very little bitterness or tannins. In normal-person language, it's kind of tart and refreshing. Texture is chalky and thick—not in a bad, powdery way but also not waxy or anything like that. When you try to break off one piece it fractures into several small chunks, and it tastes a little crumbly too.

Conclusion: Mast Brothers Chocolate The Brooklyn Blend is light and tart, with a somewhat chalky texture.

[Update 2/4/12: Since I wrote this, Mast Brothers' website has changed and now I can't find a "where to buy" list that covers brick-and-mortar stores. I'm leaving the link in case they change it back.]