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2010-11-27
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A well known commercial brand, people naturally disassociate the term 'Artisanal Chocolatier' from the Valrhona name, such as VERO or any other hand made chocolate shops like GOOSSENS. In fact most top French Chocolatiers including small scale artisanal shops import their chocolate from Valrhona. A few coming off the top of my head include La Maison du Chocolat, Jean Paul Hevin, Agnes b Delices HK, Epoch, etc. With the exception of a few sourcing theirs from other French or Spanish/Italia
A well known commercial brand, people naturally disassociate the term 'Artisanal Chocolatier' from the Valrhona name, such as VERO or any other hand made chocolate shops like GOOSSENS. In fact most top French Chocolatiers including small scale artisanal shops import their chocolate from Valrhona. A few coming off the top of my head include La Maison du Chocolat, Jean Paul Hevin, Agnes b Delices HK, Epoch, etc. With the exception of a few sourcing theirs from other French or Spanish/Italian companies, most Michelin Starred restaurants in the world depend on Valrhona for making their desserts, so that says a lot about their dependable quality. Valrhona also still make some of their chocolate via the hand made method (Choco Truffles for example) and a lot of their chocolate offerings tasted better than the Chocolatiers I've mentioned above. They just seem to get the balance of flavours, sweetness, texture and everything else pretty spot on!
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On top of what I usually eat, I bought these limited release Chocolate Bars :
2009 VINTAGE PALMIRA FINO CRIOLLO 64% -
Made to compete head on with the world winning Amedei Chuao bar, both using single origin Venezuelan Criollo varietal, the Valrhona Palmira is sourced from a Single Estate farm near Lake Maracaibo. I was surprised that 3 packs of the 2009 Vintage all tasted slightly different. This usually only happens when doing a Vertical tasting of Single Origin chocolates, not when they're all from the same year. One of these tasted distinctly dry and bitter, and on the other extreme one pack was very berry fruity, honeyed like with a mid-long finish. The Amedei Chuao also seems to be going backwards too, as this year it was highly bitter and brittle and not as good as a few years ago. The La Maison du Chocolat Pariguan 69% (Venezuelan) gets my vote for this year's Vintage, although that's nearly 50% more expensive!
2009 VINTAGE GRAN COUVA 64% -
Although graded slightly lower than the above Palmira, the Gran Couva is made from a different cacao bean, also a Single Estate varietal from Trinidad. Despite the colour being much darker in appearance, in the mouth this was actually a little more approachable and mellower, with a semi-sweet dark fruit flavour. This might pair well with some red wines and sweet wines more easily than the above in my opinion! *I only bought 1 pack of this, so it could well be as inconsistent as the above Palmira - but when compared side-to-side together, this surprisingly came out to be the Winner !
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