Monday, October 29, 2018

Belvie - Milk Chocolate Single Terroir (Vietnam) 55% Cacao bar - Oct. 29, 2018

Chocolate of the Day: 

Belvie Chocolate Maker
Milk Chocolate Single Terroir 55% Cacao bar
(Chocolat Noir Au Lait)
Good +++ - Very Good
Weight: 1.4 oz. (40 g.) / 2.8 oz. (80 g.) in total bar
Calories: 226 calories in 1/2 bar
Cost: $8.25 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Chocosphere, online order

Welcome to Day #9 of Chocolate and Vietnam Theme Week, and Day #1 of Single Origin Milk Chocolate Week.

Today's Milk Chocolate Single Terroir* 55% Cacao bar was from Belvie Chocolate Maker (Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam).

Start with high-quality dark chocolate and add a hint of milk, and odds are you'll end up with a high-quality dark milk chocolate bar that mutes strong or even slightly off flavors, and still allows desirable flavor notes to shine through. This bar achieved this goal.

This lovely, complex chocolate had balanced, high-end caramel, muted red fruit and true chocolate flavor notes, and a very faint, pleasant whiff of aromatic tobacco smoke and buttered toffee toast in the initial aroma. The bar had a milky smoothness and a lingering, clean finish.

*This bar was made with Trinitario cacao beans grown in Dong Nai province, "a hilly inland area underlaid by volcanic rock" in Vietnam.













Arete Fine Chocolate - Lam Dong 100% Dark Chocolate bar - Oct. 28, 2018

Chocolate of the Day: 

Arete Fine Chocolate
Viet Nam Lam Dong 100% Dark Chocolate bar
Good +++ - Very Good
Weight: 1.15 oz. (32.5 g.) / 2.3 oz. (65 g.) in total bar
Calories: 172.5 calories (estimate) in 1/2 bar
Cost: $17.00 for 1 bar
Purchased from: The Chocolate Garage, Palo Alto, CA

Welcome to Day #8 of Chocolate and Vietnam Theme Week.

Today's Viet Nam Lam Dong 100% Dark Chocolate bar was thoughtfully crafted by Arete Fine Chocolate (Spencer, TN). This was one of the best 100% cacao bars I've tasted in awhile. (Sadly it is sold out, so it's not possible to order some for future tastings.)

The chocolate was made with just one ingredient: cacao beans that were grown in the Lam Dong province of Vietnam northeast of Ho Chi Minh City, in the southern part of the country.

It had a mild malt aroma and flavor note (faint dark pumpernickel bread, stout). The melt and texture was creamy and smooth.* The deep, dense, robust chocolate flavor with a balanced touch of bitterness in the second half, grows on you and is very consistent (no off flavors). The finish lingers a bit, in a pleasant way.

Note: I wouldn't sample this with other sweet chocolate. It deserves to be enjoyed separately.

*If there was additional cacao butter added it wasn't clear. However, if it was, these makers have made it a point to press their own cacao butter (using the same beans they're using for the cocoa solids in a bar), which is more work than it sounds like.






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