Sunday, March 18, 2012

Taza Chocolate Yerba Maté

The American chocolatier Taza Chocolate uses traditional Mexican stone mills to grind chocolate, creating an, in their words, intense and full-flavoured chocolate for eating and drinking. Each package contains two discs of chocolate. The flavour of this bar is of yerba maté, a herb from Central America that is used as a natural caffeine alternative; I've drunk yerba maté off and on for years, when I feel tired, it perks me up. The ingredient listing is good and short, organic cacao beans, organic cane sugar and yerba maté powder. There is no indication of cacao content, but the cacao beans come mostly from the Dominican Republic.

How does it taste? Because it's stone ground, the chocolate and the sugar are not quite ground smooth enough, there is a crunchiness to the chocolate that is not unpleasant, but disconcerting if you are used to smooth melt-in-your-mouth chocolate. The yerba mate brings an underlying slightly bitter herb-y flavour that is not unpleasant, but needs getting used to. I wouldn't say this chocolate is either intense or full-flavoured, but interesting enough that I would like to eat other of their offerings. Now I read that they have discontinued this particular flavour, there seems to be not enough of a demand for it; from my point of view, I didn't like this enough to mourn its loss.

No comments: