An Assortment Of Dark Chocolates From Choquiero
Chuao 72% single-origin Venezuela Criollo
Smells sweet, dark. A chocolate shop. Hop scotch, if candy fell from the sky when you won. Sort of "cheap".
Sharp at first. Sour like juice. Takes a long time to melt and open itself. A little grainy. Sea shore sand. Rolling in the sand. Bark. Pucker. A vial of dark purple liquid. Dried cranberries. Dust. The texture of mint meltaways when I chew. Bursting sploosh plums from the tree over the house. An old woman at her cauldron in a dark cabin stirring. A month-long careful tending for flying potion. A slightly florid aftertaste.
This one never really cohered much for me. Don't know if it's me or the chocolate. Also it's very unlike most other criollo I've tried, even from the Chuao area! I expect caramel and deep round fluid experiences, but this was not that. This was predominantly fruity, with a chalky thing. I would have guessed forastero.
Cacaosuyo 80% Cuzco
Oh wow. I'm pretty sure I've had this before. Very familiar scent. Unusual. Reminds me of fermentation and mushrooms.
Purple blue green brown. The underside of a log sitting in a sour pool. A medicine man gathering black entheogenic mushrooms. A little bit chalky. Super sour, but more like vinegar or perhaps wine than like fresh or dried fruit. A dry graininess, but overall the flavor is extremely wet. A bog man chocolate. The last place to find a nearly extinct poison dart frog. This chocolate begins a terrifying ritual of transformation. There's some culture in which you must take this chocolate and endure the revelations of the swamp and cave spirits to become a priest. If this chocolate were laced with a drug it would be salvia in particular.
I actually like it quite a lot. It's impressive, powerful, resolutely its own character. Not particularly interested in pretending to be chocolate.
To’ak 2016 El Niño Harvest 100%
Quiet scent. I fucking love To'ak, jesus. It smells like content patience. Like meditating on the back porch of a secluded forest cabin with a warm drizzle falling on tin overhead.
Ok why am I not being bowled over by the 100% loudness. This is peaceful contemplation in the woods. I swear to god I'm hallucinating sweetness just from the emotional experience. Collecting a bouquet of shade-growing wildflowers. The distant sound of improvised flute music drifting down from the hill. Composing haiku while sitting on a patch of moss.
What the actual fuck. How can they do this with 100% cacao. Every 100% I've ever tasted has been a challenge. I had to develop a whole new skillset to be able to taste 100%, but I did not employ it at all for this chocolate. It's not actually sweet, but it doesn't matter. It's dry and smooth exactly like the fur of a chinchilla or Paul Desmond's saxophone.
Cuna de Piedra 73% Mexican Cacao from Soconusco, Chiapas with Mezcal Joven
Smell: A hint of cinnamon. A warm spice. Sweet, quietly excited.
Sweet bright lemon rind sour putrid smooth-melting vomit pennies daisy sunshine-wind twirling. Flying tiny gas-powered balsa wood biplane in the field. The door opening to a shimmering glowing-coals hot furnace cave volcano space. The flavor of Jafar's skin. The cozy hookah room above the torture chamber. I want to dance with this chocolate, in the follow role. It would be a delirious sharp sexual spinning.
I thought at first that I hated it, but I turned out to love it. It's similar to the Cacaosuyo in that it does not give two shits about "chocolate", but it bes itself in a very different direction. This chocolate would make an incredible lover and assassin, probably in the same evening.
Qantu Bagua 70% from Amazonas, Pérou
This is a quiet sweet scent. For some reason "orange" (the fruit) comes to mind, but I don't think I actually smell orange. Sitting on a playground swing set reading.
Sweet, smooth melt, a sharpness, a cool undertone like the water seven feet down in the pond. A sloshing highness, the undulations of frogs. This is a pond chocolate, the theme song of the snapping turtle lazing its fins, the plecostomus slurping, the ice spring that feeds and the eddie leaving.
Shockingly excellent. This is for real Art Chocolate™. I've never heard of this brand and the marketing is mediocre, so this came out of nowhere for me. Plunk huge stones with this chocolate. Squish the mud. Dangle. It's good.
Maraná 70% single-origin Cusco-Peru
Smell: Mmmm, warm and VERY fruity. Maybe like an Old Fashioned with orange zest and a cherry? Friendly cozy fireplace night time fall party.
Gritty, super sharp at first. Really bright sweet. The banana man in a face costume cartoon. A piece of the Denver bookstore Tattered Cover indi coffee shop. Somewhere hiding. Chalky. A grungy record store college Bloomington goer browsing, but she's right, she knows good taste and really does want the warmth of the analog sound. There's a coolness, but not a lot, like the underside of an desk in a disused classroom. This person studies computational folklore and they aren't in a hula hoop troup themselves but two of their best friends are and they often attend performances.
I'm not all that into it personally, but it definitely feels like a "not fitting well with my particular personality" thing; it's a pretty good chocolate, it just isn't really for me (even though I like the person I described).
