Sunday, June 30, 2019

Original Beans - Piura Porcelana 75% bar - June 30, 2019

Chocolate of the Day: 

Original Beans
Piura Porcelana 75% bar
Good + - Good ++
Weight: 1.23 oz. (35 g.) /2.46 oz. (70 g.) in total bar
Calories:  calories in 1/2 bar
Cost: $7.95 (estimate) for 1 bar
Purchased from: Chocosphere.com

Welcome to Day #6 of Chocolate and Peruvian Superfoods Theme Week.

Today's Piura Porcelana 75% bar from Original Beans (Amsterdam) was made in Switzerland. It was made using with treasured "white" Porcelana (Piura Valley, Peru) cacao beans from the Piura Valley or Peru.

The inside of the Porcelana cacao seed (bean) is creamy white (instead of the more common purple and white) and these beans are prized for their delicate, complex flavor.

The bar had light, balanced fruit (berries, black currant), faint forest floor earthiness and fermentation notes. It had a smooth dark chocolate melt and taste, with balanced blackberry, black raspberry, black currant and red grape flavor notes. The fruit was subtle, full and round, complex and lower in acidity than most "bright" berry/fruit chocolate.

The flavor finish had a very subtle but long tail. It tapered off but then had a small fruit blip late in the curve, and a very slight earthiness even later.

The makers tasting notes described the flavor as having: lime, raspberry and pecan notes.

Also important to Original Beans founder, Philipp Kauffman, that the origin be honored for its treasured resources, like the Peruvian butterflies part of today's packaging design. Kauffman has pledged to plant one tree for every bar sold "...preserving some of the Earth's rarest places."

More superfoods...
Peruvian cacao could certainly be described as a superfood. A lot of people are using that term to market exotic foods with high nutritional value. But, of course, flavor and texture of the food in question are important too. And high-quality, bean-to-bar chocolate, like today's three ingredient bar (cacao mass, raw cane sugar and cocoa butter) gets high marks in all these areas.

Also consumed today was an Antioxidant Sweet Berry powdered mix from Amazing Grass (Newport Beach, CA), stirred into a glass of water.

The mix contained a variety of fruit and vegetable ingredients, green tea, as well as maca (discussed earlier this week) and camu camu* powders.

It may not have been as yummy as today's chocolate, but the company does produce offer offerings with cacao, as well as a convenient way to hydrate with a beverage full of vitamins and minerals, particularly if you have a tough time eating your greens before they wilt in your fridge.

*Camu Camu is an Amazonian, tart fruit high in Vitamin C. It looks like a bit like a large cherry plum or a miniature red apple in photos.



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