I had the very onerous task of taste testing a second batch of chocolate provided by my nephew. As I said before, I am somewhat of a traditionalist on the chocolate front. So I am not looking for odd or interesting, I am looking for tasty. My thoughts on the latest batch:
1. Marti Chocolates: six chocolates, but I couldn’t match them to the illustrations! So I can’t enumerate them individually, but I can say they were pretty good. But perhaps if I needed the illustration to know what was in them, it was too subtle for me to give it an A rating.
2. Joy Chocolatique - six pieces of solid dark chocolate. Very good but perhaps lacking in some element of toothsomeness that would rate it exceptional.
3. Saratoga chocolates; six chocolates. Sad to say, some visitors descended on this box and ate most of them before I even got to identify what was in the box. However, I did manage to get to eat one chocolate and it was delicious.
4. Neococoa - excellent quality; especially loved the crushed bittersweet, freshly zested lime with bittersweet ganache and the toasted coconut. Less enthused about the warm ginger root and the toasted coconut, but overall thought this collection was outstanding.
5. Amano Ocumare - this brand has consistently great dark chocolate. I did not like this as much as the Amano Jembrana, but it was very nice indeed. For my money, the overall winner and best in class!