I haven’t done a ‘curious product’ post in a while; I guess I haven’t been as adventurous lately.
Today’s product isn’t really a curious product, it’s chocolate from Ghana; Dean and Deluca’s single origin 60% dark.
I’ve been curious about single origin chocolates for a while; they seem to be everywhere these days.
These chocolates are marketed by chocolatiers for being made from beans from a specific country, region or farm.
They’re packaged and sold as sets in most specialty supermarkets.
It looks like while I wasn’t paying attention single origin products became hip.
It’s not limited to wines anymore; it’s coffee, chocolate, tea, honey etc.
The idea is that food tastes unique to the region it is grown and perhaps that differing taste is lost when we mix it up.
With this bar I also wanted to see if it tasted anything like the other made-in-Ghana bars I’ve tried.
I assume those are made from wholly Ghanaian beans.
Chocolate from Ghana tastes different.
For years people have tried to determine why chocolates made in Ghana tasted different from those made in… say… Hershey, PA
But I really picked up the bar at Dean & Deluca because I liked the earthy brown and bright yellow packaging.
It doesn’t say on the package whether the beans are from a specific farm or region in Ghana, so the claim of single-origin is still a tad vague.
What I liked most were the ingredients…. simple and few; dark chocolate, sugar, vanilla and an emulsifier.
The taste was surprisingly similar to the other Ghanaian cocoa bean bars I’ve had, the texture is smoother.
It’s firm with a bold cocoa taste, it has slight fruity notes and a mellow nutty flavour.
It also has the same deep hints as Divine Chocolate’s 70% dark, except the Divine bar is richer (taste wise).
It wasn’t too bitter or too sweet except for a mild bitter aftertaste that lingered.
In all, it’s a delightfully centred bar; smooth, rich, dark with nutty hints.
Maybe the proponents of single-origin-beans are on to something after all.
My Other Chocolate Posts: