Duffys Honduras Indio Rojo 72% Dark Chocolate Bar Review

I have finally bagged a UK-based chocolate bar before my fellow bloggers and boy was it worth the effort.  Despite being one of the more expensive chocolate bars in Paul A Young at closing in on £1/10g it was absolutely worth the effort to get there and buy it.  Despite Duffy’s cynical outlook on sales being positively effected by bloggers, hopefully this blog post will inspire you to pop out and get one for yourself.

I should say that this bar is seriously limited edition.  Once the bars are gone, that’ll be that so besides the best reason for visiting Paul A Young to be his excellent sea salt caramels, it is also the perfect place to buy one of these chocolate bars.  If you do, you’ll thank me a dozen times over.

The packaging itself seems to have taken a step up on the previous Duffy’s bars.  This wrapper is shiny printed and fully folded paper with the foil-wrapped chocolate bar captured safely inside.  A large sticker on the back sealing the bar shut proclaims the bar to be a “strong dark chocolate with sweet currants, tangy orange and a raisin and coffee aftertaste”.  It says it is made from Criollo beans thought the genetic purity of any individual chocolate bean strain has been questioned of late.  The inclusion of soy lecithin is always a flavour distraction for me but the lack of vanilla was a bonus after having eaten much US-sourced chocolate over the holidays.

The chocolate itself has an extremely smooth mouth feel, having obviously been conched for a long time.  The smooth flavour is followed by a strong chocolate punch with definite dried red fruit.  The chocolate melts extremely quickly in the mouth and I wondered at the cocoa butter and conched chocolate ratios.  While I know it is a 72% I feel like it is more milk chocolate than dark due to its creamy texture, rapid melt in mouth experience and pleasant flavour.

I do get the slightest hint of orange at times with this bar but I’m not getting the coffee.  I can taste a strange flavour I have come to associate with soy lecithin but it may be what people refer to as coffee.  The obviously haven’t been drinking Square Mile coffee then 🙂

Overall, an excellent bar for mouth feel and a very good bar for flavour.  I don’t feel like Duffy has yet achieved the kind of robust flavour Soma seems to get from their beans but I may have just been lucky with the last 10 bars I bought from them…