Davida,
I received this text a few days ago that might help. Only the first three
lines are useful. The rest is the entire thread. Manjo:

I offer El Rey dark, milk and white bars. Direct source from
Venezula. Excellent dark 73.5% cocoa. and the price is far less than
Valrona. www.treats.net I ship anywhere in the continental USA

(Alex Rast) wrote in message
>...
> at Fri, 17 Oct 2003 18:56:00 GMT in
> >, (Manjo)
> wrote :
>
> >I Googled for bars and found very little available online.
> >My aged aunt loves chocolate bars and I want to send her a box of bars.
> >Is there a web site where I can order a box of 10 or 12 bars and have
> >them shipped directly to her (1,000 miles away)? Is Cadbury the best
> >and most easily available bar chocolate online?? TIA for any info,
> >tips, suggestions, comments.
> >--
> Go to http://www.chocosphere.com. This is the best chocolate site on-line,
> the handling is always great, their service is the best, and they have by
> far the best selection of quality chocolate. The brands can be a bit
> intimidating, so here's a quick synopsis of each of their characters:
>
> Michel Cluizel : Perhaps the best all-around. Tends towards a somewhat
> darker roast, less fruity character. The 50% milk chocolate of his is the
> best milk chocolate in the world. The 72% is perhaps the second best
> bittersweet.
> Valrhona : Very good. Very fruity and bright. One of their signature
> characteristics is the best texture in the industry - silky-smooth.
> Guittard : They have perhaps the best single chocolate in the world,
> Gourmet Bittersweet. The selection Etienne chocolates are outstanding.
> Overall they tend towards a very neutral balance, but tend towards a
> "generic" taste.
> Slitti : Extremely delicate. Slitti has some of the mildest, least
> aggressive chocolates at every percentage level. None of them are bitter
in
> the slightest. I find them a little bland, but it's personal.
> Max Brenner : Extremely uneven. The bars have an incredible variability.
> They tend towards the fruity side, but often taste "wild".
> Caffe-Tasse : Generally good. Leans towards a darker roast. They tend to
> select beans with little specific character.
> Cuba Venchi : Very, very dark roasters, typical of Italians. The chocolate
> is OK, but it's the gianduja that's superb - easily the best in the world.
> Dagoba : Tend toward the fruity side. Their chocolates always have a
> complex flavour. I suspect they use a lot of Trinitario beans because
their
> bars tend to have that woody/leather signature that the Trinitarios
usually
> possess.
> Cocoa Camino : They seem to focus on texture because although that's very
> good, the flavour is extremely bitter for their dark, excessively mild for
> the milk.
> Green & Black's : Terrible. One of the most overrated chocolates. Somehow
> they seem to think that the label "organic" should be enough. The
chocolate
> displays all the weaknesses common in cheaper chocolate - cloying
> sweetness, harsh bitterness, etc.
> Cote D'Or : Mixed-bag. They have good and bad chocolates. While the
flavour
> tends towards fruitiness, suggesting a light roast, some of them seem to
be
> very heavily roasted. Trying them is often difficult because you don't
know
> what to expect
> El Rey : Always intense. They have found a nice balance of roasting, but
> somehow the bars seem to lack the sophistication of some of the top Euro
or
> American brands. It's not the fault of the beans - their Carenero Superior
> bean is one of the truly great cocoa varietals.
> Galler : Lean towards the nutty side of the spectrum. They have a nicely
> balanced roast as well. Texture is always good. Excellent overall but
there
> are a few companies (such as Cluizel) who are better.
> Dolfin : They take dark roasting to an extreme. This is for the person who
> likes black, black chocolate. As a result they have little specific
> varietal character but are also minimally bitter, at most. In spite of the
> aggressive roast, they are one of the best.
> Callebaut : Fruity, but not so much as Valrhona. They're a big industrial
> concern of good but not great quality. Their flavour profile is almost
> identical with Ghirardelli, except Callebaut's milk chocolate which is
much
> worse than Ghirardelli's.
> Valor : Decidedly lacking in character. They seem to lean towards the
> problems of cheap chocolate - sweet milk chocolate, bitter dark chocolate,
> rough texture.
> Grenada Chocolate Company : They have a very woody taste to them, not in
> the unpleasant sense but rather in the sense of certain aromatic woods
like
> teak. Good overall.
> Lindt : We all know what they are usually like, but it's worth trying
their
> 85% if your aunt likes VERY strong chocolate. This is by far the best 85%
> chocolate available. The rest are, well, Lindt.
> Villars: Where's the chocolate? Not here. In common with many Swiss
> manufacturers, their bars taste very mild. Even with the 70% it was hard
to
> detect much chocolate in there.
> Scharffen Berger : If Dolfin represented the dark-roast extreme, S-B
> represents the extreme of light roasting. Thus, their chocolates taste
> *ultra*-fruity. IMHO this makes them quite unbalanced and always bitter.
> There's no denying that they're quality chocolate, but I'd stop short of
> calling them excellent - a clear case where a company's reputation exceeds
> its actual product.
>
> I hope that based on that, you can take a stab at what your aunt would
> like. Still confused? Send me a list of chocolate bars your aunt likes or
> has liked a lot in the past. I will match her profile to some chocolates
> and give you a recommendation.

--
Manjo
A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built
for. --William Shedd
Davida Chazan - The Chocolate Lady > wrote in
message ...
> NOTE: My Correct Address is in my signature (just remove the spaces).
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 07:50:07 -0000,
> (Alex Rast) wrote:
>
> >at Sat, 18 Oct 2003 07:10:47 GMT in <8jp1pv4jbr6s8ehnjlg80r6v1g6bsscndi@
> >4ax.com>, (Davida Chazan) wrote :
> >
> >>Since I have a sister-in-law in Amsterdam, we often end up with having
> >>a box of Droste chocolates from someone or another's visit there.
> >>
> >>While the dark and milk chocolates aren't anything special (and a bit
> >>too sweet for my taste), I have to say that their white chocolate is
> >>one of the very few that actually TASTES like chocolate!
> >
> >Have you ever tried El Rey? This is IMHO the best white chocolate, for
> >exactly the same reasons you mention for Droste. Now, El Rey's, AFAIK, is
> >the only one that uses non-deodourized cocoa butter, i.e. cocoa butter
that
> >hasn't had any flavour removed with a process similar to bleaching. It's
> >hardly a surprise that most white chocolate ends up tasting like wax
after
> >going through a procedure like that.
> >
> >As for Droste, perhaps they have switched to non-deodourized?
>
> Could be.
>
> >But not
> >TTBOMK.
>
> Um... pardon?
>
> >Do try El Rey if you haven't already and see if you still prefer
> >Droste after that. I can tell you that the first time I tried El Rey's
> >white chocolate my thought was instant: "Well, this is clearly the best
> >white chocolate out there, without any question!"
>
> Oh, great. Now I've got to figure out how I'm going to get my hands
> on some El Rey's white chocolate.
>
> --
> Davida Chazan (The Chocolate Lady)
> <davida @ jdc . org . il>
> ~*~*~*~*~*~
> "What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of
> chocolate."
> --Katharine Hepburn (May 12, 1907 - June 29, 2003)
> ~*~*~*~*~*~
> Links to my published poetry - http://davidachazan.homestead.com/
> ~*~*~*~*~*~