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dorchadas
Originally I was tempted to end Darker than Black on week 50, since since was when we ended Fifty Weeks, Fifty Curries, and since I have another food project planned waiting in the wings. Then I decided that we'd keep going for a while longer, as long as I could find more chocolate and these reviews didn't become too much of the same. Having decided to continue, I was originally planning to do the Taza Wicked Dark 95% Dark Stone-Ground Chocolate that my parents gave me for my birthday when they came into the city to celebrate with me last weekend, but as that link shows, we've already written about it! We get a lot of Raaka chocolate since we're signed up to a subscription service and most of it we just eat, but we don't really have any other chocolate I could write about in the house.
Fortunately, this chocolate was worth writing about.
Brown paper packaging like always.
The biggest problem with flavored dark chocolate is how much of the flavor comes through, and the second biggest problem is whether the flavor compliments the chocolate or fights it. This chocolate wins on both accounts.
When I saw it was sangria, flavored, I was expecting it to taste like chocolate with chemicals the same way that Ghirardelli Intense Dark Cabernet Matinee did. They're both alcohol-based flavors, so I thought it was logical. Fortunately, there wasn't any of the chemical smell that chocolate had here, and there certainly wasn't any chemical taste. The chocolate actually tasted fruity with an alcoholic tang, like it had somehow joined the citrus fruits that goes into sangria and been left to soak overnight. And hadn't melted. I mean, this is small-batch hipster chocolate, so maybe they have some kind of magical manufacturing process that preserves the chocolate's structure until it reaches our doorstep.
Do they make chocolate sangria? The internet tells me that they do.
Checking the ingredients here, there's no actual alcohol that goes into it. It looks like the tang I tasted came from lime zest, and there's also a few fruits--oranges, apples, cherries, etc--mixed in. However they made it, it came out great.
This would be perfect if not for that fingerprint.
schoolpsychnerd's Opinion
Fortunately, this chocolate was worth writing about.
Brown paper packaging like always.
The biggest problem with flavored dark chocolate is how much of the flavor comes through, and the second biggest problem is whether the flavor compliments the chocolate or fights it. This chocolate wins on both accounts.
When I saw it was sangria, flavored, I was expecting it to taste like chocolate with chemicals the same way that Ghirardelli Intense Dark Cabernet Matinee did. They're both alcohol-based flavors, so I thought it was logical. Fortunately, there wasn't any of the chemical smell that chocolate had here, and there certainly wasn't any chemical taste. The chocolate actually tasted fruity with an alcoholic tang, like it had somehow joined the citrus fruits that goes into sangria and been left to soak overnight. And hadn't melted. I mean, this is small-batch hipster chocolate, so maybe they have some kind of magical manufacturing process that preserves the chocolate's structure until it reaches our doorstep.
Do they make chocolate sangria? The internet tells me that they do.
Checking the ingredients here, there's no actual alcohol that goes into it. It looks like the tang I tasted came from lime zest, and there's also a few fruits--oranges, apples, cherries, etc--mixed in. However they made it, it came out great.
This would be perfect if not for that fingerprint.
schoolpsychnerd's OpinionI was a little uncertain of how the sangria flavors would come through. I figured it might be too citrus-y or sharp. To my surprise, it was a pleasant balance. There wasn't an artificial sangria taste, nor was it basically just citrus chocolate. It was a mellow chocolate with a nice wine like finish at the end. The brightness of the sangria flavor made the bitterness a bit easier as well. Overall, I really enjoyed this one.My worry with this chocolate was that it was going to be chemical chocolate, the way that the Cabernet matinee was actually just artificial grape chocolate, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I hope they put this into wide-scale production, because I'd buy more of it.
