Lake Champlain Tanzania Bar

Posted by Edmund in Chocolate, Featured Articles, Gourmet Chocolate Bars, USA | 0 comments

Composition: 75% Dark Chocolate.
Region of Production: USA.
Origin of Cocoa: Tanzania.
Price: for 85g.

Producer’s Notes: Creamy and intense, yet fruity and floral, this complex profile reflects the climate of its East African origin. Tanzania is a land of extremes, and in its chocolate you’ll find all the raw strength, warmth, and tanginess of slightly wild cocoa.

The presentation is an utter disappointment. Normally I’m a fan of Lake Champlain’s thick, sturdy build. Upon opening the bar, though, I was greeted with a broken mess, as the bar had a gigantic fissure running down the right side. I was surprised by how brittle such a hard, intense chocolate bar could actually be. Still, I love the loud snap of the thick, gigantic squares, though I find the format rather clunky, since an intense chocolate should be savored in small bites.

The chocolate itself tastes decent. The intensity of the 75% cocoa tends to be downplayed—in a good way—by a very fruity, floral overtone that permeates the whole taste. Leather, walnut, and oil emerge during the middle of the taste, adding some needed intensity. Those tones are on the lighter side, serving as a very subtle accompaniment to a rather earthy flavor. That is, however, the very problem with the chocolate: It’s so subtle and weak that it doesn’t feel like dark chocolate at all, let alone a 75% dark chocolate. For single origin cocoa, the bar tastes disappointingly monotonous, a problem made all the worse by the heavy use of lecithin, giving the chocolate a marked waxiness. It ends with a more pronounced, rather dry aftertaste, verging on the leathery and slightly nutty.

Nor does the texture make the matter any better. The high cocoa concentration gives the chocolate a tough other shell, one which takes an infinity to melt. Moreover, the tough edges hit sharply against the mouth as you move the chocolate around. The melt does, thankfully, leave a nice, thin coating across the mouth that leaves you puckering with a slight smokiness.

Scores

Presentation: 0.5/5.0
Taste: 1.5/5.0
Length: 0.5/5.0
Melt: 1.5/5.0
Value: 1.0/5.0
Verdict: 1.1/5.0