Theo Chocolate 3400 Phinney Organic Chocolate Collection

The wrappers are adorned with artwork by a local Seattle artist.

After the success of the last co-tasting with my wife, Genevieve, I decided to try this format again with a few organic chocolates from  Theo’s 3400 Phinney Collection. It’s fun to bounce your impressions off someone else and always interesting to hear the flavors they perceived, but you missed.  Genevieve amazed me again by catching some tastes that seemed almost obvious, but only after she called them out.

We tasted three bars from Theo’s 3400 Phinney collection named for the address where Theo’s chocolate factory sits in Seattle.  The collection is made up of mostly innovative flavor combinations with a few more traditional bars thrown in like Coffee and Dark Chocolate.  Of course, we veered right off the beaten path and went straight for these three:  Bread and Chocolate, Thai Tea Milk Chocolate and Fig, Fennel and Almond in dark chocolate.  All are USDA organic and Fair Trade™ Certified 2 oz bars.

Once again, rather that provide a rating, we have decide to each vote for our favorites within this bunch.

Theo 3400 Phinney – Chocolate Fig, Fennel and Almond.

Me: A warm mix that moves slightly in the direction of pastry.  My fear that the fennel would be arid and astringent like the seeds you chew when you exit an Indian restaurant were unfounded.  The fennel was strong enough to be a major note, but added just enough aromatic nuttiness.  Still, I feel it was hard for the chocolate to come through and be fully appreciated with all the nutty noise going on.

Genevieve: This would be nice with black tea, or coffee or even over vanilla ice cream.  Very interesting, but not my favorite of the bunch.

If you are a fan of nuts in chocolate, then you should try this one since it’s a welcome departure from the everyday, simple nuts-plus-chocolate theme.

Theo 3400 Phinney – Chai Tea Milk Chocolate

Me: Melts readily in your mouth leaving a mildly spiced blend of chai and chocolate that works perfectly.  The chai lingers for a long, long time on the finish.

Genevieve: Pepper and cloves, vanilla, cinnamon.  I drink chai tea every day, so I can’t help but love this combination.  Well done.

Theo 3400 Phinney – Bread and Chocolate – 70% cacao

Me: Surprisingly crispy – crackling in the mouth.  The crumbs of toast are extremely small so they are evenly spread out in the chocolate.  You get some nice strong dark chocolate up front, then a buttery blend of toasted French bread and cocoa that fades into mostly buttery toast with the crunchy little bits lingering for a while.  All in all, a very interesting taste experience.

Genevieve: The salt is stronger than expected.  Taste a little yeast?  It’s fun. Once again, this one calls for something to drink – maybe Café-au-lait would work well.  We tried red wine (2007 Penfolds Koonunga Hill Cabernet-Shiraz blend) which worked pretty well.   Light coffee or Café-au-lait would work best.

LAST BITE: We almost agreed on the ranking, but at least agreed on #3:

Me: #1 Bread and Chocolate #2 Chai Tea Milk Chocolate #3 Fig, Fennel and Almond.

Genevieve: #1 Chai Tea Milk Chocolate #2 Bread and Chocolate #3 Fig, Fennel and Almond.

We both felt the Fig, Fennel and Almond and the Bread and Chocolate have great potential to be paired with coffee, espresso or black tea.  So, push aside the biscotti and pull out some organic chocolate from the 3400 Phinney collection and enjoy a change of pace.

Theo Ghana /Panama / Ecuador Blend – 75% Cacao

Theo Chocolate was the first to make fair-trade, organic bean-to-bar chocolate in the United States.  Still a relatively small operation out of Seattle, they continue to expand their offering of bars in three lines:  Classic, 3400 Phinney, and Origin.  The classic bars include plain and flavored bars as well as a collaboration with the  Jane Goodall Institute.  3400 Phinney is a collection of innovative flavor combinations such as Bread and Chocolate packaged in a whimsical wrapper designed by a local artist.  The Origin bars specify the origin of the cacao and attempt to capture the distinct growing environment and terroir in the flavor of the finished chocolate.  As we will see next, Origin doesn’t necessarily mean, single-origin.  The Ghana – Panama -Ecuador uses cacao from all three countries to make an intriguingly complex blend of flavors.  Did they succeed?

WHAT:  Theo Ghana / Panama / Ecuador blend – 75% Cacao.  3oz / 84g. Fair Trade certified by Transfair USA.   The Panama and Ecuador beans are organic, but the Ghana beans are not.  Price range: $$

WHEN: 16 September, 2009

OVERALL RATING: 86

AROMA: Banana, cinnamon, leather, distant bacon (like when you’re camping and someone starts cooking bacon in a distant campsite early in the morning and you start to smell to faint aroma permeating your tent), buttered toast, hay.  I haven’t come across such complex aroma profile in a while.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS: Apple peel, unripe pear, butter, chardonnay wine.

MIDDLE TASTE: Bread, bananas, prunes, butter, cinnamon, slight clove, un-smoked ham.

FINISH: Apple peel, bread, cut hay, milk.  Flattens out smoothly to a buttered bread at the very end for a long finish.  Very pleasant ending – no astringent despite the high cacao content.  Not a remarkable  finish, but very good.

TEXTURE: Smooth, creamy.

LAST BITE -  The aroma was the best feature, I rated it a 9.5, but this is not to say the taste was less than wonderful.  It’s just that the complexity of the aroma was like nothing that I’ve tasted recently and outshined everything else.  This complexity did, indeed, carry through to the flavor.  With the jet-black color, I was afraid the beans might be a bit over-roasted.  It wasn’t.  I tasted this one twice over a week’s time and on the first tasting, it was more intense, feeling more like 85 or 90% cacao, but on the second tasting it seemed more mellow and balanced.  It “ate” more like 70%.  Great job Theo!  My only request for improvement would be to try to source organic cacao from Ghana to make the trio complete.  I know this is not simple, but it would make the bar more consistent with the rest of the Theo line and philosophy.  In the end, it’s not a major complaint since two out of three ain’t bad.

Sorry for the long delay since my last tasting.  I’ve had a cold.  To be fair to the chocolate and catch all the nuances I wanted to be fully symptom-free before tasting again.  I’m back in the game now and should have more posts to come soon.

Disclosure:  I was given this chocolate for free by Theo Chocolate.