| Monday, August 24, 2009 |
06:28 - Chocolate Reviews: Amano Ocumare, Jembrana, Montanya, and Madagascar
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The latest arrival from Chocosphere is four 70% single-origin bars from small Utah manufacturer Amano, and I think they're all good enough to warrant some serious recognition.
The packages, as has been noted elsewhere, appears to be a more or less bald attempt to ape Amedei; and they could hardly choose a better archetype, as the 50g size of Amedei's bars and the elegant white lettering on black background with gold and silver trim is a surefire way to make a product look high-class—a fact that Safeway's in-store brand (Safeway Select) took full advantage of until, inexplicably, about a year ago, when they redesigned all their packages to be more generic, downmarket, and ugly.
Amano's 56g (2oz) bars are divided into 15 little squares about the ideal size for tasting; not so big that you have to subdivide (like Lindt's), and not so small that you're tempted to take two or three. The aromas of these four bars are all intense and alluring, and yet they're vastly different in flavor character, hinting at the variety to come.
Because once you start tasting these bars, you realize that there's hardly another source on the market that can produce such a varied spectrum of flavors. Even some of the single-origin-focused makers I've tried earlier, such as Pralus with its "Pyramide" of eight widely-spread sources, somehow confers an overall common musky flavor to all the bars, diverse as they are; and lineups like Valrhona's vintages (Palmira, Gran Couva, and Ampamakia) seem somehow to taste faintly of peanut butter. Amano's, however, all seem to have genuinely come from different corners of the world, yet all have fine texture and melt.
Ocumare: A very "traditional" chocolate flavor, yet underscored with a deep muskiness. You'd have to compare this to a single-note bar like the Lindt 85% to get a good yardstick; yet this one has several additional dimensions to it beyond just the basic cacao you taste initially. Pleasant, but might take a little getting used to for a beginner, and the aftertaste is a little bitter.
Madagascar: Expecting an intensely sour, puckery prune flavor like with the Domori Sambirano from the same region, I instead get a pleasantly tart, citrusy burst that merely accentuates rather than overpowers the underlying chocolate. I don't know what it is about the Domori that makes it so nutso with its tartness, and why nobody else seems to have noticed it in reviewing it; and I'm certainly not saying I dislike it, as I'll happily buy more Domori any day of the week. But this stuff from Amano, with a light red-brown color that indicates it's definitely made from the same stuff as Domori's, is just a whole lot more approachable.
Montanya: This bar is presented with great fanfare by its packaging as being a highly unique, limited-production run of bars made from cacao grown uniquely in high-altitude mountain regions (whereas most cacao is grown on flat plantations near sea level). The batch is small because the orchards can only be reached on horseback. Now, I don't know whether it's the climate that affects the growth of the beans, or the beans themselves having evolved along different lines, but this cacao tastes nothing like any 70% I've ever had. If I didn't know better I'd think it was milk chocolate. It's light, fluffy, fruity, and frothy; the package suggests it'll taste like marshmallows, and I'll be damned if that's not exactly what I taste. In fact, the phrase that leaps unbidden to mind is "Wonka's Whipple-Scrumptions Fudgemallow Delight". I don't know how many more of these bars Amano plans to drag out of the jungle, but I'd recommend picking up as many as one can get, if only for the sheer novelty of a 70% bar that tastes this airy and light. Put it up against the rich, complex, dark Lindt 70% for some real entertainment value.
Jembrana: A Balinese chocolate that I've warmed to in the course of working my way through it. It took me a while to realize what I was tasting in it, but eventually I recognized the "Circus Peanuts" flavor that I'd seen in Villars a couple of Halloweens ago. It's perhaps meant to evoke banana, but the effect is one of a very indistinct yet intense fruitiness, somewhere between apricot, banana, and peach. Finishing off the flight with one of these is like dessert after your dessert.
In short, Amano seems to have its game well established. I'm not hesitant in the least about counting them among some of the best manufacturers I've tasted.
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Brian Tiemann
