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Every month a box of 'the-most-fantastic-chocolates-in-the-World', individually hand made by most excellent chocolatiers, would drop through the letterbox I reshaped especially to receive it. Please enjoy these mouth watering treats in a linguistic format. No calories - and you get to keep your teeth!
These boxes contained about 50 chocolates, usually two of each main variety. I would eat one and savour its qualities and later on with the second one would write about it while I was involved in the sensory experience. I found this process of writing about immediate sensory experience as it happened a great way to get the linguistic juices flowing. Here are some of the reviews, bet you can't get to the end without dribbling !
Whisky Truffle
A firm fit in the mouth with a rippled texture that melted with blood warmth. After a slow initial start, my tongue encouraging the outer layers, the truffle imploded gently with shards of dark chocolate bedded into the outer mass and burrowing their way into the creamy centre. A wide taste of whisky warmed my mouth and filled my heart.
Macadamia Smoothy
I fitted the dome shape into my upper palate and left it there to warm. The casing slowly melted and then cracked open in places, leaking a subtle flavour of warming gin and neroli-like orange that quickly turned to flavoured fluid. Suddenly my mouth was a river of macadamia and orange and I swam down it to melting point. Like a swift visit to a sophisticated cocktail bar.
Kenya
The pixelated, rasta-coloured top drew my interest from the very beginning. Edible pigment in cocoa butter. It seemed the right size to bite into. Chilled to two degrees below room temperature it broke easily in my mouth, the crust of tight chocolate breaking easily into a brick like core. I let it rest a moment and suddenly all the coffees I’d ever enjoyed rushed me in ambush. I could taste the plantation, the heat, the sweat that had gone into these beans, the singing of the plantation workers, beating together with the cocoa nibs like sharp bubbles in the sand. They melted together with a nutty finish. I’m sure I saw giraffes.
Le Crunch
An ‘energy builder’ claimed the description. An almond and two hazelnuts sat together and my first bite took one of each. It split like perfect slate and nested while my tongue worked the edges, soon feeling nutty texture. Light brown flavours infected my taste buds. The flavours merged together into toffee. It melted together with the surety of a target taste, I could feel it compiling a taste direction in my mouth. I bit into them and nut and praline exploded together infusing a delicious end flavour leaving nutty shards.
Memories
It was lust. A Toblerone made by angels in heaven exploded nut stars and nougat.
Confit d’Orange
The bundle took a while to melt, releasing slow flavours like a distant memory of orange. It broke into an orange wonderland and I rafted on the dark chocolate down an orange flavoured stream of pleasure. The enrobing raft stopped me drowning and caressed me into the flavour, leaving shreds of elfin marmalade scattered around my mouth.
Smile
I wanted to bite into my smile but I didn’t. It fitted in my mouth perfectly and I rolled it round and over as it melted to me. As the smile melted inside me it infected my heart with a grin. I felt welcomed by a world of tiramou ganache which whispered secret flavours to me about the original beans.
Mignonne
I placed the hazelnut-domed, white chocolate carefully upright into my mouth.
My glands secreted swift saliva at its scent, urging the melt. Rotating the ball, my tongue soon found a nutty texture emerging from the robe, leeching subtle flavours. The wafer and nut counterpointed each other perfectly. The wafer melted in waves of creaminess, the nuts patiently waited, clustered in melting chocolate. Finally I bit into it and the nut maiden ran from her bushes and showered me with sweet kisses.
Calvados Truffle
I popped the whole thing in at two degrees below room temperature. I sensed a petrol-like energy building, suggestions of supercharged Cox’s Orange Pippin bleeding through its melting skin. I rolled it around in anticipation. The flavour hues grew deeper as the chocolate escaped into me, revealing a forest of Calvados ganache that stretched away to melting point in a mellow, toffee ending.
Lime Sorbet
A perfect fit in the mouth with a fascinating speckle like a bird’s egg. The skin fractured quickly to ooze sweet lime that flowed with increasing sharpness across my tongue. The light explosion of fruitiness slowly faded to chocolate bliss dark as a raven’s wing.
Rum and Sultana Ganache
A firm shape like a square Christmas cake with an enrobed sultana crowning it. It was quite big but I popped it in in one go anyway.
The melt started. On one side the raisin roughed my tongue like the gentle but rough lick of a cow. The internal ganache morphed itself to fit my palate and ultimate flavours started to leech through the casing. The temptation to bite became intense and my teeth fractured through the sultana, mixing a rush of Carribean rum to float over the soft, dark ganache. I put my Bob Marley CD on.
Rose Cream
With my first one of the two, I was impressed how a flavour as delicate as rose transferred to chocolate. Yum. I was transported to Chelsea Physic garden and my first smell of a chocalate scented fritillary. I was in a bower made of chocolate and scented roses hung around me. Waves of dark chocolate fondant flavour almost overwhelmed me in a moment out of time.
Green Apple Sorbet
I placed the chilled chocolate with its bright green splatter into my mouth and waited. Its like that moment when you light the fuse of a firework and ‘stand well back’. The advantage of chilling was clear with this chocolate, it gives the skin a little more integrity while the insides of the chocolate warm to blood temperature. The sweet nugget collapsed slowly and vibrant green flavours erupted onto my taste buds like oozing lava. Scintillating colours rainbowed my mouth and throat as it slipped down in a river of sweet-sharp sorbet and ganache.
Enrobed English Fudge
I liked the look of plain chocolate to this one, but avoided the temptation to bite it. I had eaten the first one at room temperature and was suprised how much chilling changed the whole effect the second time around. Instead of melting into a mass, the fudge crumbled delightfully to sweet-rich and dark-earthy flavours. It was all over too quickly. May I have another one please?
Bruges
The surface crackled and the chocolate spread out in melt. Crispy chrunchles were taste and texture asteroids in a flood of feuillentine. I even tasted the crisp, starched uniform of the chocolatier who so lovingly created the pancake crystals and embedded them in a pure river of milky wonder.
Criollo baton
I scoffed a pure criollo baton while I considered the next victim from the box. Of all chocolate flavours so far it is criollo that transports me the most, on a whistlestop tour of Africa that leaps the ocean to South America. I become part of the earth’s consciousness deep in dark wonder. A simple chocolate can hold so many mysteries.
Brigitte
A chocolate by master makers Hermes. It melted well, maintaining its form. The outside melted in unison with the inside and flavours of almond marzipan transported me back to the bazaars of Istanbul. Hazelnut praline nestled at the core. This chocolate morphed through flavours, retaining them all in a most excellent symphony.
Jockey
I prefer the mysteries of dark chocolate the the mothers milk of creamier varieties, and enjoy chocolates that have ‘stages’ which this one certainly has. The milk chocolate surface one melted away, leeching a darkness from the core until I bit into the ground zero of hazelnut heaven. It was beautifully timed for a perfect finish.
Rocher Noir
The instant tang of dark chocolate hit my hungry tastebuds. This chocolate had lacerations of caramelised hazelnut embedded in its surface that woke up my tongue with texture. The ball warmed in my mouth and slowly imploded. The crisp texture dissipated with the enrobing to a centre of almond praline I wanted to bite. I waited and worked my tongue, eroding the rich and fresh taste until my eyelids went fluttery.
Chinese truffle
I loved the streak of white chocolate in this one. It reminded me of Cruella De Ville in 101 Dalmations. It was a perfect size and it sweated layered tastes onto my tongue. I played with it like a worry bead in my mouth until it finally split through the skin on one side. Like the first eruption, ginger took me and filled me with warmth nurtured by the careful ganache. It was like a whole evening by the fireside in two minutes.
Dark chocolate baton 60% Belgian
Two molecules into the silky sheen deep flavours started to erupt. I was planted in black soil as the rich flavours expanded my senses. My roots straddled the ocean, one set in South America and one in Africa. The whole world was in my mouth, whispering to me its fresh, earthy secrets.
Summertime
Hazelnut, cocoa butter, pistachio with smooth and creamy chocolate sail along together into a summer sea of aftertaste. Elegant flavours mixed in harmony.
Ramses
Deep coffee-chocolate flavours dwell in a mystic core of smooth hazelnut praline. Aftertastes are rich and nutty, lurking for a while and coating my tastebuds with Egyptian night.
Ganache 982
Richest, deepest, darkest, strongest - scintillating flavours of coffee night, burnt sugar and butter mingle with the fresh, creamy chocolate. Was I consuming the chocolate or was it consuming me? For a moment I lost touch. This was essence of Black Forest Gateaux with a wide and lingering aftertaste.
Clever Creme Caramel
This chocolate was so clever it just leapt into my mouth without any help. The first tastes as the double heart chamber melted sent me schitzoid. Caramel flavours flooded from one half and dark ganache from the other as it played on my tongue, slowly unrobing. Then it merged my psyche back to harmony. Shards of the chocolate chambers protected the last moist flavours until fade.
Mango Sorbet
Delicate as a quails egg, its orange speckles tempted me in. The skin erupted flagrant mango while a rich, dark core stood back to complement. Extreme fruitiness put me in a party mood as the three tastes of white chocolate, mango and deep ganache came together in a perfect finish.
Latte Machiatto
Creamy milk and a burst of coffee with chocolate sprinklings, even the foaminess was there. Like all the most perfect coffees and hot chocolates merged into a single experience. I would spend my life in a coffee bar that served this.
Georgette
I immediately felt the weight of this one in my mouth. It was so heavy I had to sit down and rest my legs while I concentrated on the chocolate. It sat there like a huge gobstopper and I turned it round waiting for the flavour to leach through the peat-dark exterior. Its form started to compress with the warmth. The top suddenly slid open like a sun roof. As the dark chocolate coating floated away it left an amorphous shape and deep almond and marzipan flavours ending in a Christmas Cake finale.
Reims truffle
From 2 degrees below room temperature, I waited a moment for this truffle to explode inside my fascinated mouth. Layers of chocolate flavours, from creamy white to plain dark chocolate and back. From chocolate day to chocolate night, carried to Africa and back by a huge Giraffe covered in champagne dust, my endorphins singing across the plains of the Serengeti.
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