blind chocolate tasting on the farm
A chocoholic’s Hawaiian fantasy, I had the opportunity to take Steelgrass Farm’s Chocolate Tour a couple of weeks ago. The tour is conducted at Steelgrass’s luscious, and mainly edible, property near the town of Kapa’a, on Kauai’s North Shore. As I mentioned in a previous post, Steelgrass does not currently product chocolate but does serve as a cacao nursery for several burgeoning Kauai chocolate plantations. They do, however, serve up all the chocolate you can eat to guests of the farm. And I was not shy about partaking! The tour culminated with a blind tasting of 10 chocolates–that’s 10 different flavor experiences with one of the world’s most popular aphrodisiac! If you follow my writing, you know this was certainly not my first blind chocolate tasting. (But I must say, this was my first tasting held outdoors in the middle of a cacao farm. The setting truly put this food of the gods into the proper context!) The tasting was conceived with a focus on 60% + cacao, single origins around the world, featuring artisan chocolates (some of which were completely new to me). I’ve posted my tasting notes below but if you would like to try the blind tasting yourself, Steelgrass sells the tasting assortment on their website at http://www.steelgrass.org/tasting.htm
1. Valrhona Gran Couva
At 64% cacao, this is a super-fruity chocolate with lots of cherry and cashew flavor. Although I didn’t love the mouthfeel (it lacks that real melt-in-your-mouth quality), I so appreciate the lingering brown sugar note on the finish.
2. Santander Single Origin Dark
Grown in Columbia, this 70% cacao chocolate is earthy with citrus fruit notes and a sourness on the mid palate. But its flavors are rounded out with caramel. It is probably the most tannic chocolate of the tasting.
3. Guittard Chucuri
Another Columbian offering, this 65% cacao chocolate is sweet and smooth with virtually no tannin. It is a chocolate I would probably choose for cooking, for eating as it lacks complexity.
4. Hershey’s Extra Dark
A 60% cacao chocolate grown in various parts of Africa, this chocolate offers straightforward, creamy sweetness but goes slightly vegetal on the mid palate, finishing with a coconut note. All-in-all, it is a nice chocolate for the price although slightly disjointed in structure.
5. Waialua Estate North Shore Oahu
The only native Hawaiian bar in the tasting, this 70% cacao bar had the most inviting, classically “chocolaty” aromas of the bunch. In the mouth, it offered a hint of pomegranate and reasonably heavy tannin.
6. Republica del Cacao
Grown in Ecuador, this bar had the highest cacao at 75%. There was a slightly off-putting menthol aroma but in the mouth it was creamy with baking spice and coconut notes.
7. Felchlin Elvesia
A 74% cacao bar, I found this chocolate to be weird and totally uninviting. It was at once bitter and sour with a strange, smoky note.
8. Taza Stone Ground
Ground, as the name implies, by stone in the Dominican Republic, this chocolate is 70% cacao. Its texture is bizarre, gritty–as one member of the group described it, the sensation is like eating chocolate-flavored sand. Its flavors, however, are pretty, of dried berry, if you can get past the texture.
9. Valrhona Manjari
This 64% cacao bar from Madagascar is decidedly girlie with citrus/floral notes. It is one of my favorites of the bunch although it does finish a bit sour.
10. Kallari Red Leaf
A 70% cacao chocolate from Ecuador, this was the most straightforwardly sweet of the bars. It reminded me of Easter candy with a lingering flavor of kid’s cereal, like Frosted Flakes. (I know it sounds bizarre, but true!)
