Fossa Florid Milk Chocolates
Chrysanthemum
Smells miraculous. Like a night garden. Purple soft-glowing bioluminescent flowering vines like string lights. Sweet and cherubic. Smells like a chocolate for fairies.
The softness of milk. A slightly grassy dandylion-like taste. I just had the thought "Is chrysanthemum even edible?", which I think has to do with the strange yellow bitterness. I like it, but it's very odd. It tastes a lot like eating a flower out of curiosity. Definitely a playing-in-the-garden chocolate.
The milk powder isn't overwhelming. If I recall correctly, the only milk chocolate I've really approved of so far was also Fossa, the Duck Shit Oolong. It's well balanced. Feels almost like a different kind of candy, something rounder and softer than chocolate, and it's doing a good job of being itself.
Honey Orchid Dancong Oolong
This smells sweet and quiet. Also purple, like a nap.
Mmm yes there's the tea. I love oolong. It's really an extremely pronounced tea flavor, and it actually reminds me a lot of matcha. A deep slightly muddy green. I feel like eating this whole bar. It reminds me of being lazy on a pond boat, taking apart cattails and making a mess with the fluff.
Lychee Rose
Wow! This one has big old chunks of stuff on it. Probably lychee and rose petals!
Smells florid and fruity. A musty muted aged scent, a brightness and youth. I smell a woman's longing for childhood in this chocolate. Rose-scented pony dolls and flavored chapstick.
There's a lot going on in the melt. Lychee bits are sharp sour sweet on the sides of my tongue. Rose infused with the chocolate. Oh, the hard bits are cacao nibs, not rose petals. Interesting.
There's an awful lot going on with this bar tactically. The chocolate has a smooth soft break, the lychee is chewy, and the cacao nibs crunch. It's very satisfying as a snack. It has almost every texture I really want in a food, collaborating harmoniously.
None of these flavors is overpowering. They're all extremely well balanced. The lychee is mostly just a sweet sourness. The rose is mellow and not too bright. The bitter sharpness of the cacao nibs lends this bar some kind of reality, keeping anchored to the ground instead of floating off into imaginary cloud land, which I think stretches the experience into something that speaks to more parts of me, or across many years. The milk smooths everything together like opium.
This chocolate is quite remarkable in that it doesn't just target a moment in childhood, like so many sweet chocolates seem to. It's more like reminiscence, or being all ages at once. It's like climbing up the outside of Grandma's stone fireplace to reach the best plums. It's like sending your pony dolls on adventures in the tall grass. It's like watching your children play tag as you read in the sun.
I ate the entire bar.
