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Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Taste-Off: Valrhona v Valrhona v Ghirardelli
Regular readers of chocophile.com know that I don’t shy away from controversy around here and we’ve taken on several of the sacred cows of chocolate in the past couple of years.
Now it’s time for another, perhaps controversial, comparison: is European chocolate always better than American? Not everything is as it seems.
Recently, I attended a dinner at the Mark #### that featured Frederic Bau, Valrhona’s corporate pastry chef. I wrote about it here.
At that dinner I was given a goodie bag that included several items, including a bar of Valrhona Le Noir (56% cacao), and a bar of Valrhona Le Noir Extra Amer (85% cacao) among other items. Just a couple of days before I had picked up a bittersweet baking bar from Ghirardelli (cocoa content not specified) in my local supermarket because many people had been recommending it to me.
Before we go any further, it is important to point out that Ghirardelli is owned by Lindt, a European company, though the Ghirardelli products are still made in the US.
For a recent dinner party I was asked to bring chocolate for dessert. (As if I would be asked to bring anything else?) So I stuck these three bars into my bag and took them along, not knowing quite what to expect.
We started out by tasting the Valrhona 56% bar. It had a nice clean snap and a basic chocolate aroma that was not sweet at all. The texture, however, was off—hard and crumbly sort of chalky, not melting properly in the mouth. There was a hint of fruitiness in the middle taste with some slight nuttiness after, but overall it was undistinguished, tasting sweeter than it smelled. It cleared out of the mouth pretty cleanly and quickly without lingering.
Next was the Ghirardelli. It’s about the same color medium-brown as the Valrhona (which doesn’t really mean anything), with a slightly less crisp snap and a noticeably less-sweet, more bitter aroma. The bitterness carried through on the taste, but the bar actually tasted sweeter and more bitter than the Valrhona at the same time, with some woody notes, and the taste lingered more strongly in the mouth on the long finish than with the Valrhona. What was most impressive about the Ghirardelli when compared with the Valrona 56% was the texture. The Ghirardelli was quite smooth compared with the Valrhona’s crumbly chalkiness, although there was a very faint grittiness to it.
The Valrhona 85% actually smelled less bitter than the Ghirardelli bittersweet, which is an indication that roasting is a more of a contributing factor to sweetness than the amount of sugar. The color was noticeably darker than the 56%, but not as much darker as I would have expected. The snap was crisp and the texture was actually better than either the 56% and the Ghirardelli. The flavor however lacked much real chocolate taste and died in the mouth very quickly and not all that pleasantly at the end, going from a sort of medicinal bitterness through some very slight slight fruitiness—it almost tasted like there was no vanilla in the bar (and in fact the ingredients list vanilla extract and not vanilla, which may be a factor).
I have eaten many 80+ cocoa content bars and the 85% Le Noir Extra Amer was one of my least favorites.
Ratings for all three bars would be Ordinary, and of the three, if pressed, I would choose the Ghirardelli.
Posted by
on 05/05 at 10:25 PM
Comments:
Well, among all 80% class chocolates, what are some of your favorites and least favorites? I find Castelain 85% and Domori Break among my favorites.
Posted by
on 08/01 at 02:34 PM I certainly commend you on your choices, Bernard Castelain (from Avignon in France) makes some wonderful products and his bars are consistently very good, the 85% included. Domori also makes a wide range of really very good products and their Break was one of my favorite high cocoa content eating chocolates—at least when it was more readily available.
The Cluizel 85% is also quite good, especially when eaten in direct comparison with the Valrhona 85%, which points out a specific need to eat chocolate comparatively, not in isolation. 85% is not as common a percentage as 80% or even, now, 90%. One of the surprises at the recent Fancy Food Show was the introduction of at least three new 90% chocolates, two from Ecuadorian beans and one from Trinidadian beans. When I can get quantities to sell, I will offer them in the co-op.
Posted by
on 08/06 at 10:01 AM Was one of these bars called Plantation Chocolate? I think this is Vintage’s own line of bars made entirely out of Arriba cocoa from Ecuador. I had the opportunity to sample the three percentages (72%, 90%, 100%), and I wasn’t particularly impressed with either. They had a heavy cinnamon flavor and were a little dry.
Posted by
on 08/06 at 02:25 PM Pete:
Yes, one of the 90% bars was the Plantation chocolate from Vintage Chocolates (eChocolates.com). You are right in that it’s a little flat, but that’s in part because there is no vanilla in it—a pretty gutsy move for such a young manufacturing operation. The 65% and 75% (not 72%) bars I just tasted have a little “dusty/dry” texture and a mouth feel that is not as smooth as it could be. I get the underlying cinnamon taste that you’re referring to, but in the bars I have it’s not that heavy and certainly less objectional than the top-heavy vanilla notes in some bars.
There is far worse chocolate in the world and knowing something of the path by which these particular chocolates have come to market, I think the Plantations Chocolate line deserves support as it will only improve over time. These are the first Rainforest Alliance certified bars; the Rainforest Alliance certification goes far beyond Fair Trade in letting consumers know that third-world farmers are not being exploited.
Posted by
on 08/09 at 11:08 AM Chocovic’s bars also lack vanilla, and they definitely taste flat. I don’t know why brands omit vanilla from their bars because in every such bar I’ve tried, there was a distinct flatness that vanilla would have otherwise rounded out. Galler’s 85% is the same way as well, I believe.
Some brands also seem to add way too much vanilla, as you point out, and the result is a flavor reminiscent of a sugar cookie or vanilla wafer. If it’s not one extreme, it’s the other.
Posted by
on 08/09 at 03:23 PM Have you tried some of the Bonnat bars? They also do not add vanilla and, in my opinion, they are not flat tasting. Not sure what they do in their process that’s different, but I don’t miss the vanilla—I’ve remarked elsewhere that vanilla is to chocolate what salt is to other foods.
What I think is going on here is getting back to a more “basic” taste, one in which the chocolate taste is most important and thinking of vanilla as a “masking” flavor to hide deficiencies and slight variations in flavor from batch to batch. It’s much harder to create a consistently good product without any masking flavors. Cluizel uses bergamot in their 99% Noir Infini.
Posted by
on 08/10 at 06:07 AM I haven’t tasted Bonnat yet (and I’m dying to); the only place where I can get Bonnat is through http://www.chefshop.com, and they’re sold out of most of their stock. They do, however, have a few bars, but they’re not the ones I want to try. I’ll just have to wait until they re-order.
I recall you making the analogy to salt and food, and I had that phrase in mind while making the last post. It seems as if Bonnat has found a secret formula or process to mask their omission of vanilla, and until other brands can duplicate that, I will favor vanilla in my chocolate for the full-rounded body that it provides.
Bergamot, huh? Instead of masking flavors, wouldn’t it impart its own citrus flavor on the chocolate? That’s odd because in old batches of Noir Infini I detected a slight citrus nuance, but newer batches were entirely devoid of it (the flavor). I prefer the newer batches, actually, because they seem to taste less bitter. Perhaps he changed the formulations or maybe my taste has changed?
Posted by
on 08/10 at 07:09 AM Yes, older batches do have a slightly citrusy/herbal note that you can taste/smell high in the mouth and in the nose. If new batches have been reformulated (which happens all the time) then the tast will be different. I suspect that the bergamot was originally used to mask some bitterness so if it’s no longer there than the reformulation may include differences in roasting to reduce bitterness.
It’s also quite likely that your tastes have changed as well as you’ve expanded your taste memories and experiences. I, for one, actually really like many of the chocolates without vanilla although a year ago I could not have said the same thing. But then, my first experience with named origin chocolates was Bonnat. Have you tried the Hacienda Rosario? It’s really very good.
Posted by
on 08/10 at 08:36 AM Well, a friend of mine recently told me that Cluizel’s Concepcion has favorably changed in flavor, so perhaps Noir Infini has as well.
My tastes have definitely changed; I’ve refined my palate quite a bit and can discern flavors and other chocolate characteristics much easier now than I could a year ago. It takes time and practice. Although I said I prefer chocolate with vanilla, I still appreciate the bars that lack it. It’s simply something different, and it adds a little “spice” to my otherwise vanilla-filled chocolate consumption.
No, Hacienda Rosario is on the top of my list, as well as Puerto Cabello and Chuao. Those are the three bars from Bonnat I really want to try, but any other bar would be fine too.
Posted by
on 08/11 at 06:57 AM I just tried the Valrhona 85%, and I must say that it is not exactly a winner, especially compared to Valrhona’s other bars. It had a chiding bitterness throughout with a burnt flavor that peaked in here and there. However, it was quite fruity - tart and sweet red fruits, such as red currants - which, imo, cut back and distracted from the overall bitterness. It’s a very lackluster chocolate, not possessing any complexity, and furthermore, the finish is especially less than desirable. The wrapper claims that it’s made from the “finest cocoa beans from Africa.” That explains it. For such a high cocoa content bar, why use African beans, especially since most are bitter? Furthermore, why would a light roaster, such as Valrhona, opt for such bitter beans anyway? It seems that they failed to match roasting time with bean selection, and as a result, the bar is among the least palatable of 80% class chocolates.
Posted by
on 01/10 at 12:51 PM Peter: Somewhere, someone liked the way this chocolate tastes, otherwise I don’t think it would ever make it into production. That said, very few companies make consistently high quality products throughout their product line. I agree with you in your description of lackluster - there is nothing special about this bar. There are a lot of very good African beans, and there are many companies that are doing very good things with them, however this is not one of them :Clay
Posted by
on 01/31 at 09:47 AM
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