Amedei Venezuela Single Origin Cru Chocolate

Amedei tells their story on the inside of the Venezuela Chocolate wrapper - in Italian...and English.

As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been an online review of Amedei Venezuela chocolate since 2005 and at that time it was only available as 5 g tasting squares.   Knowing that chocolate makers can tweak their methods over time and seasonal weather patterns can affect the beans, it seems like we are overdue to taste this bar.  I’m happy to grab a full 50 g bar now and see what’s new with this dark chocolate.

Amedei’s “I Cru” series of chocolates each use cacao beans from a different region and plantation.  The crus are created to express the unique climate and conditions in one small area as well as the farmer’s efforts to preserve a genetic lineage in the cacao beans going back for generations.  In the Venezuela Cru, the beans are technically of the trinitario variety, but Amedei explains they have a genetic make-up that is more than 85% criollo.  Amedei uses this combination of location and premium beans to create a unique and satisfying chocolate.

WHAT:  Amedei Venezuela Single Origin Cru Chocolate.  70% Cacao. 50 g.  Ingredients: cocoa mass, cane sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla. May contain traces of hazelnut, almond, pistachio, walnut, milk. Where to buy Amedei Venezuela.

WHEN: February 13, 2011

OVERALL RATING:  89.

AROMA:  Honey, banana, tea, angel food cake, vanilla.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS:  Starts with cinnamon, cafe-au-lait and moves quickly into all the rest.

MIDDLE TASTE:  Cafe-au-lait, coffee, a hint of blueberry, green apple.  Very pleasant with slight to moderate complexity.

FINISH:  Grapefruit, clean acidity, orange blossom, fades to little tinge of cinnamon and nutmeg.  Most of the floral notes show up here.

TEXTURE:  Ultrafine and smooth.

LAST BITE: Amedei has risen quickly to high stature in the chocolate world, propelled, in part, by winning the “Golden Bean” award for Amedei 9.  The Golden Bean  goes to the best bean-to-bar chocolate at the World Chocolate Awards, London.  This doesn’t mean that all of their bars are fantastic, but there’s no doubt that they’re of consistently high quality and among the best in the world.  For some people, many of Amedei’s bars are too delicate and balanced – like a sort of a Merlot of chocolate – pleasing to everyone, offending no one, but not taking any risks.

I don’t see a big problem with a chocolate that everyone likes, but more importantly, we should recognize the challenge and culinary risk-taking Amedei embraces when working with single origin beans. They don’t have the luxury of using a blend of different beans to balance the flavors as in Amedei 9.  Instead, the beans from one region or plantation must be tamed by experimentation and hard work – like turning a wild horse into a gentle yet powerful, beautiful creature anyone can ride.  Pleasing to everyone?  I hope so.

Notes:

[1] The term “Cru” is another word borrowed from the wine world.  For French wine it’s used to designate a specific growth place such as one plantation or winery.  This is a more narrow designation than say, Bordeaux A.O.C., where the grapes are allowed to come from anywhere in the region including many different vineyards.  Cru wines, on the other hand, are supposed to express the terroir of that single vineyard.

[2] I paid for this bar myself.

Amano Montanya Dark Chocolate Review

Amano Montanya chocolate sits atop the bar wrapper - now completely empty

I kicked this year off by reviewing an exceptional limited edition bar –  Amano   Cuyagua.  Now it’s about time to get back into some chocolate reviews with bar that has an equally great reputation – Amano Montanya.  Both chocolates use rare cacao beans  from Venezuela, a place that has achieved the reputation of producing the world’s best beans.  While beans from Cuyaqua are found close to the sea, Montanya’s beans must be brought out of the northern mountains on horseback.

Although difficult to access, these secluded cacao farms may have serendipitously benefited from their isolation by preserving precious cacao of the criollo variety.  It’s thought that cacao tree grafts from the area around Ocumare were long ago brought up to these mountains, helping to preserve a species of cacao that now may have become more diluted back near the city of Ocumare.  It’s in the remote northern mountains that Amano Artisan Chocolate found these special beans and was the first to turn them into a limited edition dark chocolate bar.

For an introduction to Amano, see this earlier  chocolate review on Amano’s single-origin Bali chocolate, Jembrana.

 

WHAT:  Amano Montanya Single-origin Venezuela Dark Chocolate.  70% Cacao. 56g.  Ingredients: Cacao beans, pure cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole vanilla beans.  Kosher Dairy. Where to buy Amano Montanya Dark Chocolate.

 

 

 

WHEN:  May 1, 2011

OVERALL RATING: 90.

AROMA: Raisins, dried fruit, herbal, forest, black pepper, some leather.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS: Apple, raisins, dates.

MIDDLE TASTE:  Cantaloupe, a burst of smoked ham, apricots, apple running through all of it with a touch of citrus.  The middle is definitely the most fun.

FINISH:  Apricot, cinnamon, caramel, chocolate milk, ending in green banana.

TEXTURE: More or less the fine smoothness that I’ve come to expect from Amano.

LAST BITE – What’s cool about the complexity of Amano’s chocolate is that you can taste it again days later and get a glimpse of something different – new dimensions. There are chocolates that I really enjoy like Grenada Chocolate Company’s 71% Dark Chocolate that are more monochromatic.  These chocolates have their place, but Amano’s Montanya offers a different experience – one of nuance and subtly.

If I had to choose between Cuyaqua and Montanya (good thing I don’t), I’d have to give a the edge to Cuyaqua for it’s added complexity, elusiveness and a touch more smoothness on the texture, but we all know that it’s not so simple.  The judges at the Academy of chocolate, London, may disagree with me since they awarded Amano Montanya the Silver Medal for best dark chocolate.  I have to wonder if they had tasted the Cuyagua at that competition or not.  Either way, both bars are among the best in the world and well worth a try.

Tasting the Mysterious and Elusive Amano Cuyagua Dark Chocolate

View Larger Map

Amano makes two exceptional limited edition dark chocolate bars:  Cuyagua and Montanya.  Both use relatively rare cacao beans of the Criollo variety from Venezuela, a place that has achieved the reputation of producing the world’s best beans.  The Cuyagua bar starts with cacao from the secluded Cuyagua Valley not far from the Caribbean sea.  Amano Artisan Chocolate then transforms the beans into small batches of incredible chocolate.

Since Amano takes their chocolate seriously, they have made it easy for us to taste and compare their bars by keeping the cacao content at a level 70% for all of them.  This allows you to focus on the pure flavor that’s derived from cacao origin, bean variety and the skillful chocolate making that Amano does best.  The Cuyagua bar included a mini tasting guide that provides suggestions on how to taste fine chocolate.

For an introduction to Amano, see this earlier chocolate review on Amano’s single-origin Bali chocolate, Jembrana.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The box art on Amano Cuyagua Dark Chocolate is a painting of a cacao flower

WHAT:  Amano Cuyagua Single-origin Dark Chocolate.  70% Cacao. 56g.  Ingredients: Cacao beans, pure cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole vanilla beans.  Kosher Dairy. Where to buy Amano Cuyagua Dark Chocolate.

WHEN:  Jan 8, 2011

OVERALL RATING: 92.

AROMA: Honey, yogurt, herbals, ham, vanilla.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS: cloves, licorice, butter.

MIDDLE TASTE:  Cantaloupe, cloves, blueberry, raspberries (elusive), grapes, cacao fruit, marshmallow.

FINISH:  Coffee, watermelon, caramel, banana, nutmeg, plantain, light cedar at very end.  This dark chocolate continues to evolve and show a different facet with each bite.  I could go on and on with more flavors, but I’ve finished half the bar and that’s about my quota.

TEXTURE: I’ve decided to coin a new term: Amano Smooth.  There is a particular smoothness to this bar with no discernable particles – the chocolate just melts away as you chase every bit of flavor slowly from your mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ingredients for a chocolate tasting: Amano's tasting guide, a notebook, and, of course, the chocolate.

LAST BITE – Cuyagua  can be summed up as dark, mysterious and elusive.  It’s also a late bloomer of sorts – starting off more closed in the initial taste then evolving into complexity that’s worth waiting for.  Each piece seemed to produce new flavors not experienced in the first.  The raspberry notes I found on the first bite disappeared until much later when I had given my pallet a rest and cleanse with a lot of soda water.  The of depth of flavors I found with each bite was really amazing.  If you try this, experiment with how long you wait between tastes (if you can stand it) and see if you can’t recapture some of the earlier flavors or if it just evolves into something new.  Have fun, but don’t be surprised if half the bar is gone before you have a grip on the flavors of this elusive chocolate.

Disclosure:  A distributor was kind enough to send me this bar without knowing what I would do with it.  I’m happy to provide my objective and unbiased review using the same methods that I’ve applied to the previous reviews on Koko Buzz.

Valrhona Palmira Chocolat Noir de Domain

Valrhona Palmira Single Estate Bar Label

I’ve been reviewing a lot of unconventional chocolate lately – nib-filled bars and coated cacao beans to name just some, so I thought it was about time to get back to a simple, pure chocolate bar and talk about the essence of cocoa origin.  Cocoa origin is primarily about place.  Where the cacao is grown imparts a certain character to the chocolate that cannot be reproduced exactly the same way elsewhere.

The venerable Valrhona makes such a wide range of chocolate that many people are not aware of some of their more obscure limited edition bars.  Akin to how some of the world’s finest wines are made, the Chocolat de Domain bars use cacao from only one estate where Valrhona can more closely control and monitor the quality of the beans produced year after year.  In keeping with the wine analogy, Valrhona declares a vintage for each harvest, in this case 2009.  The Palmira Plantation is situated in the fertile  lands of west Venezuela close to lake Maracaibo.  It’s here that they grow the world’s most rare major cacao variety – Criollo, a flavor bean that’s used to make less than 5% of all the world’s chocolate [3], a bean known for it’s subtle nuanced flavors.   By getting very specific about location – down to one individual estate, Valrhona takes single origin to the extreme.

Put it all together and you’ve got something truly unique – a chocolate made from single-estate cacao from a specific harvest year representing the characteristics of that growing season, location and, most importantly, bean variety – Criollo.  Now that’s just half the battle because after harvest, there are nine more steps involved in making a fine chocolate bar all of which can be fouled up in some way.  But, I wasn’t too worried going into this tasting since I’ve been told that the French know a little something about food and Valrhona about chocolate.   No, I went into this with great expectations.  So let’s taste.

 

Valrhona Palmira Single Estate Bar. This square is only about 2 cm wide and reveals the fine mold design and care taken to achieve a beautiful finish on the bar.

WHAT:  Valrhona Palmira Chocolat Noir de Domain (single estate).  64% cacao.  75g bar.  Ingredients: cocoa beans from Venezuela, sugar, cocoa butter, soya lecithin, vanilla.  Where to buy.

WHEN:  August 14, 2010

OVERALL RATING: 90

AROMA:  Honey, caramel, lavender, vanilla, banana, orange blossom, faint almonds.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS:  Banana, floral – lavender, light coffee and buttered toast.

MIDDLE TASTE:  A long, slow release of fruit – blueberry, cantaloupe, apricot and orange.  The fruit notes are less intense, yet not as short-lived as some less refined bars.  They are slow, steady and elegant.  Very gratifying.

FINISH:  Orange, citrus, creme and angel food cake slowly dissolves into vanilla ice cream.  A wonderful, long-lived finish leaves no unpleasant tastes.  Fades into an almost imperceptible straw note.

TEXTURE:  What is remarkable about the mouth feel was that the bar didn’t just melt away, it was more of a sensation of dissolving slowly into liquid.  This is velvet.

LAST BITE:   Most likely the result of long refining and conching, this bar gives up its fruit in a slow, steady stream that you can savor.  Unlike some of the minimally processed bars like Taza [2] where you get a sudden blast of bright fruit, Palmira is elegant, refined and sensual.  This bar is all feminine , not necessarily voluptuous like Scarlett Johansson, but more elegant and mature like Cate Blanchett.

The most rewarding part of the experience is the middle taste with its long and remarkably well-balanced fruit.   Valrhona seems to have worked hard to remove any off-notes at the expense of some intensity in the middle.  The result is well worth the trade-off with satisfying well-balanced fruit that you don’t need to search for.  What a fine criollo bar should be.

Please Share:

NOTES:

[1]  I paid for all of the chocolate myself.

[2] To compare Taza to Valrhona is absurd, but that’s the point – these are completely different styles.

[3] Estimates of world-wide Criollo production vary greatly with some estimates at less than 1%.