Friday, August 17, 2001


last night my husband, mr. right, read this little blog and decided to bring home some chocolate wrappers -- with the chocolate inside them. as a result, we had an impromptu chocolate-tasting! ohhh boy. . .

what he got: a bar of el rey, a bar of valrhona with hazelnuts, a bar of flyer -- mixed milk and dark --, and a bar of scharffenberger 70%. since he had carried them home in the heat on the subway, they weren't in absolute prime condition, but that didn't stop us from tearing into them.

my favorite, strangely, wasn't the valrhona, but the el rey bucare. what a delicious aroma, beautiful bar finish, nice crisp break, lovely mouthfeel. although i must confess the aftertaste was perhaps a tad grainy -- again, that could be due to the condition of the bar in the hot weather. normally i would have thought el rey not quite as good as the valrhona; but i've had a change of heart. i'm in love with el rey chocolate again today!

as for the flyer, i'd never had that mix of milk and dark with extra vanilla. since i prefer darker chocolate, i wasn't so fond of the flyer. it didn't have the same clean finish to the bar, although it did break crisply. i thought if had an aftertaste of too-hot evaporated milk - i don't know how else to say it. and it was too sweet for me. however, this is the bar my husband loved best.

as for the valrhona: in one sense, you couldn't compare it to the others, because of the hazelnuts in it. but at the same time, it's still valrhona, and boy howdy do it love it! it was superb in every way. however, i was surprised that the el rey had such an exquisite scent. it was a glorious chocolate perfume, and the valrhona just didn't have such a strong aroma. since so much of taste is actually smell, this probably weighted me in the direction of the el rey. . .

as for the scharffenberger 70%, it is an excellent cooking chocolate, but for eating, i have to say the el rey was the winner. of course, your mileage may vary! what's important is that you go get some bars and taste 'em all today!

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