Pump Street - La Pareja, Piura Dom Ramon's Farm Peru 72% Dark (bar) - Feb. 4, 2024

Chocolate of the Day

Pump Street 
La Pareja, Piura Dom Ramon's Farm Peru 72% Dark Chocolate (bar)
Good ++ 
Weight: 1.23 oz. (35 g.) / 2.47 oz. (70 g.) in total bar
Calories: 197 calories in 1/2 bar (563 kcals per 100 g.)
Cost: $10.25 for 1 bar

Purchased from: Bar and Cocoa, online order

Welcome to Day #6 of Chocolate and Peru Theme Week.

Today's La Pareja, Piura Dom Ramon's Farm Peru 72% Dark Chocolate (bar) was from Pump Street Bakers and Chocolate Makers (Suffolk, England).

Peru is home to many varieties of cacao. The rare white piura (Piura Blanco) cacao beans (native to Peru) used to make this chocolate were from a 120-year old farm in La Pareja (Peru), a village with a population of approximately 1,000 people.

It was a stormy, rainy winter day today in California where I live; and this Peru bar was a perfect, bright and bold winter warmer.

Aroma notes included: dark chocolate; almost undetectable light floral, green, biscuit; and very faint, fleeting vegetable (ripe sweet tomato, mixed sweet vegetable juice (tomato, celery, greens)--that disappeared after the package was open for 20-30 minutes. (Note: I did not find these fleeting/initial "vegetable" notes objectionable at all. These notes often disappear fairly quickly after the opening a sealed package.)

And the aroma notes just kept unfolding; so I suggest re-tasting this bar after an hour or so. I also enjoyed rich mocha caramel, and very, very faint caramel apple, when I re-tasted this 72% Peru bar later in the day. 

Texture: smooth, with a slight astringency in the finish

Flavor notes: Dark chocolate (rich cocoa, drinking chocolate); fruit (rich ripe, sweet-tart blackberry, nectarine, cacao fruit pulp); and subtle, diffuse warm spice. Medium, balanced (fruit) acidity. Bold, bittersweet chocolate flavor, (teetering on the edge of earth (loam) and bitter notes, without fully arriving at either).

What I liked about this bar: 1.) the opportunity to taste a rare cacao with complex, bright and bold blackberry and stone fruit flavor(s); 2.) well-executed, rich (single farm) aroma and flavor notes that continued to develop after opening; 3.) warming quality - like sipping a mug of hot, single origin cocoa; and 3.) the maker's choices that let the Piura cacao/fruit nuances shine.

Maker's Tasting Notes: Blackberry, Warm Spices, Ripe Peach

Ingredients: Cocoa beans, cane sugar and cocoa butter.

Allergen-related information: "May contain milk, cereals containing gluten, eggs, nuts and sesame seeds."