Artisan du Chocolat Pure Origins chocolates

I had a chance to pick up some Artisan du Chocolat chocolates recently and I just couldn’t help myself. Instead of gobbling them all up like I wanted to, I ate them slowly, detecting the flavours and reviewing the experience. I should say, the shop experience wasn’t great so where I had gone in expecting to spend more, I actually spent less.

One thing I did was to use the leaflet I got with the chocolates to see if I could detect the flavours they were describing. As with all flavour descriptions, some I found matched but most I had questions about. There could be a number of reasons for this but here is what I thought of the pure origins chocolates I got:

Java Dark – not quite sure where they get hay for this in the description in the leaflet – it is a smooth ganache milk chocolate which is slightly flat and not as robust as perhaps a Soma ganache but it is quite nice on its own. Not challenging as a dark chocolate and lacking that bitter, over roasted edge some chocolate has.

Java Milk – slightly grainy ganache tasting of sugar mainly. The chocolate flavour is overwhelmed by the malted milk flavour of the ganache and the extremely sweet nature of this chocolate was a bit extreme for me. The dark was delightful but the light was a bit too much.

Madagascar Milk – I came back at this after a few hours and I am struggling to describe it. Yes it has butter notes but is that because of the ganache? I can’t really pull much out of this chocolate but unlike the java is was smooth.

Madagascar dark – here I’m getting distinctive notes of raisins and the suggested red fruit. This dies seem to have a unique flavour all its own which is slightly acidic and while not unpleasant left me with a slight impression of coffee.

All in all, I’d probably get the ganaches again but I’m not sure I’d get a big box. They were lovely in small doses but I’m not sure I’d want a big box of them 😀 I’m a little piggy – not a big one 😉