Chocovic Unique Origin Chocolates

by Deidre Woollard, Posted Aug 12th 2005 @ 5:15AM

One of my current obsessions is single origin chocolate. Like wine, chocolate can have terroir. Cocoa beans from various areas have strikingly divergent tastes. It's not necessarily something you would notice on a casual basis but taste two different single origin chocolates together and the difference becomes apparent. I'm currently tasting the Ocumare which uses criollo cocoa from Venezuela and the Guaranda which usues forastero arriba cocoa from Ecuador. The Guaranda has a more standard rich dark cocoa flavor while the Ocumare tastes sweeter with rounded spice notes and a slightly perfumey taste that was startling at first but is increasingly seductive. For novelty and eating on its own I prefer the Ocumare but because the Guranda is more traditional it would work better if it was used in a recipe or being eaten with wine. Both use a minimum of 71% cocoa so they are definitely intense and full of all those healthy flavoniods that make eating dark chocolate the new nutritional must. I found my Chocovic at Trader Joe's.

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Filed Under: Ingredients
Tags: artificial sweetener, chocolate, cocoa+beans, CocoaBeans, dessert, ecuador, single-origin+chocolate, Single-originChocolate, venezuela