I haven't seen the name mentioned too much, but I stopped searching for
great chocolate after trying El Rey from Venezuela.

Whether it's dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolate...I've had
extremely good success with the brand. Great for baking, great for
melting...great for just plain ole eating!

-Dennis Spexet,

"Alex Rast" > wrote in message
...
> at Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:04:28 GMT in
> >,
> (Michael Sierchio) wrote :
>
>>Alex Rast wrote:
>>
>>Excellent, well-informed post.
>>
>> > ... Country of origin is never a reliable indication of quality.
>>
>>When I first read that I thought you were talking about the raw
>>material. It is interesting to taste those "estate" chocolates
>>from a single confectioner.... I don't think it's just a gimmick,
>>there are cultivar and terroir, etc. to provide differences.
>
> Yeah, when I said country of origin I meant country of origin of the
> manufacturer. Country of origin of the cocoa beans themselves makes a big
> difference in flavour, although even there you can't be assured of quality
> based on bean source. For instance, although beans from the Ivory Coast
> are
> generally thought of as "low-grade" and potentially involve slave labour
> to
> boot, some Ivory Coast beans are excellent, and not all plantations use
> slave labour either. Meanwhile although beans from Venezuela are generally
> thought of as being "premium" beans, there are plenty of Venezuelan beans
> whose quality is less than great. Even chocolate produced from the same
> source can be different depending on the manufacturer. For instance,
> Dagoba
> and Domori (2 quality chocolate manufacturers) both make a single-source
> chocolate from the Conacado cooperative in the Dominican Republic. But the
> Dagoba chocolate is really quite poor whereas the Domori chocolate (Chacao
> Absolute) is one of the greatest chocolates that has ever been produced.
>
> It is indeed interesting also to see how different factors play out in
> single-source chocolates. There are influences from bean type, roasting
> time, ferment time, and terroir among others. I generally believe bean
> type
> and roasting time tend to have the largest impact. It's often hard to
> separate bean type from location because a given region typically
> specialises in a given bean variety. For instance, Barlovento in Venezuela
> is a superb chocolate-growing region and tends to produce chocolates with
> an exotic flavour of tropical fruits and sweet spices, but this is at
> least
> as much because in the main the bean type there is Carenero Superior.
> Madagascar chocolate usually has strong citrus notes, but there again,
> they
> tend to be from similar Criollo bean genotype.
>
> And there are cases that are hard to classify. For instance, Chuao, a
> single village in Venezuela, produces a fantastic cacao, with very
> characteristic, strong flavours of molasses and blueberry, along with an
> unmistakeable power and a slight bitter hit at the end. And at the same
> time there's a tendency to talk about the "Chuao" bean, even though beans
> from Chuao have something of a mix of genestocks. But it's fair, by and
> large, to speak of a Chuao varietal because they've used the same trees
> for
> generations and not planted in new clones from elsewhere. So over time a
> cacao type has emerged, with a mixture of backgrounds but with very
> specific properties. As if that weren't enough, most people generally
> classify the type as a Criollo even though it has a certain percentage of
> Forastero genes (Criollo and Forastero are basic genotypes in cocoa).
>
> Back to the single source, the roast and ferment times are likewise
> variables that affect the result. A dark roast, for instance, tends to
> flatten out individual distinctions of bean type and origin, but sometimes
> this is in fact desirable because otherwise the chocolate might be too
> "bright". For an Ecuador Arriba, a light roast would in fact be poor
> because with its Forastero lineage that would make it bitter and harsh,
> and
> furthermore most of the quality flavour characteristics in that bean,
> leaning towards blackberry and aromatic woods, shine better with a dark
> roast. Such a choice, however, would be disastrous for Porcelana beans
> whose light, strawberry-and-cream essence, would disappear.
>
> This is why the best (and in any case most pleasurable) option is to try a
> variety of single-source chocolates from a variety of manufacturers, and
> see which ones you like best. It's a valuable journey to take because then
> you can identify the style and origins that you like and continue to try
> new chocolates with a better concept of which ones you'll prefer.
>
>
> --
> Alex Rast
>
> (remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)