Monday, August 25, 2014

Pacari - Piura Quemazon bar - Aug. 25, 2014

Chocolate of the Day: 

Pacari Chocolate
Piura Quemazon - Single Region bar
Good + - Very Good
Weight: .352 oz. (10 g.) / 1.76 oz. (50 g.) total bar
Calories: 60 calories (estimate, per label) in 1/5 bar
Cost: N/A - sample
Purchased from: N/A - sample

Bienvenidos (Welcome) to Day #4 of Chocolate and Ecuador Theme Week.

I would be remiss if I had an Ecuador-themed chocolate week and didn't include an offering from Pacari Chocolate (Quito, Ecuador), a family-owned business that makes chocolate from tree-to-bar in Ecuador -- with one or two intriguing exceptions, such as today's bar.

This dark chocolate (70% cacao) bar was made by Pacari, with Piura Quemazon cacao from the Piura region of northwest Peru, adjacent to Ecuador. This bar was also an International Chocolate Awards winner (Americas Gold in 2012 and World Gold in 2013).

The bar had a hard snap and smooth texture. It was a lighter, reddish brown in color (almost closer to a milk chocolate bar in appearance). It possessed a seductively complex and subtle flavor profile, with fruit, floral, earth/forest and smoke notes, and a very faint hint of pleasant licorice at the end in one bite I sampled. (This latter note disappeared in later bites.) The bar was soy free (it contained sunflower lecithin rather than soy lecithin), gluten free and certified organic and kosher.
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