Cacaosuyo
Cuzco, Peru 80%
Note: I’ve tasted this one before.
Scent: Sweet and warm. A little sour. The ocean and a summer breeze. A quiet field with spikes of stone jutting.
Taste: Sharp and a little hot. Warm subtle sweetness emanating. A sea creature with multiple heads and huge sharp teeth guarding its island lair. A marsh plant oozing blue and green poison. Someone praying to a local bog god. The hidden miniature world of magic and evil forces and destiny between the ground and the underside of a log.
Reflection: This is a fantastic chocolate. It has so much to say that has nothing to do with candy or comfort or the standard chocolate things. This chocolate is about power, magic, and grit. An excellent chocolate to inspire a young adult fantasy novel.
Rupa Rupa, Peruvian Amazon 100%
Scent: Sharp and spicy. Some kind of psychedelic or entheogenic plant. Grapefruit.
Taste: Very sharp and bitter. Definitely the flavor of a psychoactive drug. This tastes very dangerous. Tires and black ooze. Hot black ooze bubbling. A terrifying in-between part of the afterlife. A place where you wait before entering the hall where the gods fight each other for souls. It is barren and bleak. There is no happiness, only desperation and indefinite waiting for fate.
Reflection: Thanks I hate it. It's not an uninteresting chocolate, but it certainly doesn't overcome the challenges of 100% in ways that make it actually pleasant to eat.
Chuncho-Cuzco, Peru 70%
Scent: Sweet and punky. Definitely has pink or red highlights in its hair. Childish and unreflectively self-absorbed. Rides a scooter.
Taste: Sweet, buzzed, sloppily kissing another girl. Surprisingly quiet. A little chalky. The rocky entrance to the artificial cave that's really a centuries-abandoned effort to make a railway tunnel through a foothill that proved too tough. Teenagers gather there most weekends to get drunk, smoke pot, and freak each other out. One time there was a seance, but nothing happened. By coincidence, though, the half-finished tunnel stops just short of a prehistoric catacomb.
Reflection: I feel like the character of this is buried. Muted, or departed. It's almost like a reincarnated ghost of the Cuzco 80% that hasn't gone through its trigger event yet, and maybe never will.
Quinoa Crunch, Peru 40% (milk chocolate with quinoa)
Scent: Sweet and milky. Sandy beach Easter. Bicycles and skateboards and soft worn-out clothing. Vaguely nutty.
Taste: Very sweet and smooth. Melts so fast. Poky bits in the melt that I'm sure will crunch when I bite. Oh such a fun toy to chew, like firecrackers. Faded salmon and desaturated goldenrod colors. 8 to 10 year old childhood in the summer. Caught in a dust devil, straw and wind all swirling your hair with your face up and arms out. Playing with toy trucks that haul dirt and sand while your sister builds a castle for her ponies. Running because there's no reason not to.
Reflection: This is an artful snacking chocolate. It certainly repays additional attention with a deeper experience, but it really just wants you to monch. An unusually kind chocolate. It's like if proper fairies, as in the Fae, spent some time being godparents. Soft and friendly, with something ancient and powerful and wise underneath.
Note: A month later, this has become my go-to monching chocolate.
