Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
~~Silicon Valley~~New York-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

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Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
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Cartago Delenda Est

Book Plugs:

Buy 'em and I get
money. I think.
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Friday, April 4, 2008
19:57 - Chocolate Reviews: Dove Origins (Dominican Republic, Ghana, Ecuador)	(top)
Dove Origins (Dominican Republic): Richly fruity Dove Origins (Ghana): Nutty and spicy and melty Dove Origins (Ecuador): Astringent and metallic; definitively Arriba I just noticed that Dove is getting into the single-origin chocolate market, with three 100g origin bars they're selling in supermarkets in fairly long, tall formats. The ingredients list more components than your typical "purist" dark chocolate bar, comprising milkfat and "natural flavor" into what they're calling "semisweet chocolate", yet the bars are all labeled as 61% cacao without any additional flavors picked out on the packaging. Even a perfunctory tasting reveals that whatever they're doing to this chocolate by adding natural flavors doesn't seem to have any negative effect on its taste or, indeed, its single-origin character. Something I notice from all these bars is that they're very smooth-melting and rich in mouthfeel, making me wonder if it's the milkfat that's adding something to the texture that other bars lack, or if it's just a side effect of the bar's shape which lends itself to rather thick chunks of chocolate instead of the broad, flat pieces you get from (say) a Lindt bar of the same weight but in a much wider package. The lightish brown color of all these Dove bars (compared, at least, to the inky blackness of a Lindt 70% or 85%) makes me suspect the former. My favorite of these three, flavor-wise, has got to be the Dominican Republic one. It's intense and engaging, with lots of harmonious fruity notes, a well-balanced blend of tart and sweet and herbal and nutty. It all flows together very nicely, and reminds me of nothing so much as the hot chocolate I had at Fleur de Cocoa shortly before I left Silicon Valley: a hot drink that you have to chew. The label describes it as having a "rich taste of fruit and wine", and I can certainly see that as being accurate. The label on the Ghana bar is a little less so, though: "intense, robust, full-bodied chocolate flavor." Sure, it's a full-bodied chocolate flavor, rich and nutty with its own fruit-basket of undercurrents, but it's not quite as intense as I'd like�a little slow to develop, but once it does it's certainly got a good head of steam built up, and a lot to say all at once. In fact, I was intrigued that Ghana is popping up a lot in single-origin chocolate lineups from Theo to Pralus, and thought to compare it to the Choxie 58% Ghana single-origin that you can get at Target in a tasting box with several other origins (wrapper at right). To my surprise, as someone who's become used to labels that don't really prepare me for a flavor I can match to a geographical name, they both taste almost exactly the same: nutty, toasty, ice-creamy, a bit like the ubiquitous Callebaut 60%, but with a bit more fruit to it. Interestingly, the Choxie is just a slight bit less perky and forthright�the Dove jumps out with more robust and complex flavor notes than the Choxie does, yet is subdued compared to the Dominican Republic. Still, on its own I wouldn't call the Choxie "bland"�it's actually pretty rich and interesting in its own right. I think what this tells me is that the Dove DR bar is really unusually flavorful, when next to it even this lively and aromatic Ghana bar seems dull. But I'm reassured that the Dove and Choxie Ghana origins taste so similar�they're clearly, even obviously, of the same varietal, though the Dove seems to stand out quite a bit more in the flavor department, like switching to an HD version of The 5th Element after spending the first half-hour at broadcast resolution in a 4:3 ratio. I'm liking what Dove's doing here, "semisweet" or no. What gives me the most positive impression of Dove, though, in this tasting is that the third bar, the Ecuador, is (rather paradoxically) that it's so intense and bitter as to be almost inedible except slowly and in small doses. That's because of all the Arriba bars I've tried in recent months�Arriba, remember, being the characteristic flavorful Forastero variety that's grown exclusively in Ecuador, and what nearly all "Ecuador" bars you'll encounter are intended to showcase�is perhaps the most characteristically "Arriba" that I've ever yet encountered. I've come to expect a certain harshness from Arriba, a bitter, astringent, almost metallic hollow tang, modulated by prune-like fruitiness and an almost alcoholic aftertaste. Some bars, like the Hachez Cocoa d'Arriba, are very heavy on this pruniness, even to the exclusion of real chocolate flavor; others, while being billed as "Arriba", don't taste much like this characteristic profile at all (Choxie's "Ecuador" origin, for example, which to me just seems blandly and inoffensively coffeelike). But this Dove bar just comes right out and thwacks me in the face with its "Arribaness"; it's a flavor I'd recognize anywhere by now, as easily as I'd distinguish Coke from Pepsi, and it's unalloyed by any of the complicating extra notes that other manufacturers seem to stir into their Arribas. This is not, however, to say that I like this Dove bar, particularly�again, its bitterness and astringency make it a bit of a challenge to enjoy properly, especially in any volume. But the fact that they can come right out of the gate and put "Ecuador" on the label, and have it taste so immediately and recognizably like "Ecuador" to me, makes me think their late entry into the single-origin game is based on some very attentive taste-profiling and market-watching on their part, and I must salute them on a job well done. If only the label on this one wasn't so badly off: "light floral and fruity notes"? Nnnnno, I don't think so. But then, that's how everybody seems to describe Arriba, and I simply can't reconcile what I taste with words of that sort. Ah well�I know what it tastes like, is the point, and perhaps the larger point to be drawn from all this: words just don't do these flavors justice, which makes these blog posts an amusing exercise in ironic futility. On a recent order that I put in by phone to Chocosphere, I talked with the lady who puts the orders together and we had a mini-brainstorming session as to how future offerings might be structured. I thought that a Chocosphere-selected lineup of bars of related lineage, such as four or five different Arriba bars, might make a really interesting offering to people who are fine-tuning their taste buds to detect chocolate by origin. If they do, I think they'll have to give Dove a serious shot at being included among the boutique brands they usually focus on; because despite the supermarket-shelf aim that the Dove brand usually stands for, and the milkfat-and-natural-flavors laxity of the ingredient list, they've done a damn fine job capturing the flavors they're trying to promote here, and might well be counted on to illustrate those flavors as a "standard" by which to judge the purist-oriented variances of the more exclusive manufacturers. I hope Dove continues this effort and brings out a few more single-origin bars to try; if they're as definitive and tasty as these are, I'd love to see what they make of a Venezuelan Criollo or a Madagascar Sambirano.