70% Dark Venezuela Chuao Purist Bar

Well, that week certainly sped by and what a crazy busy week it has been! 


This is the last of the Purist bars from Hotel Chocolat that I'm featuring this year as it will take me another year to save up to buy three more! If you've seen my price survey you'll be aware that these bars are top the price charts. 


The Chocolate: No need to repeat myself about the packaging as the picture below tells you everything you need to know. However, it does make you wonder how something so expensive can be in such mediocre and simplistic packaging. Clever marketing I suppose?

According to the tasting notes provided Hotel Chocolat managed to obtain some of the most prized cocoa on earth! Criollo cocoa beans have been used to make this bar of chocolate producing mellow flavours of roasted nuts, cream and caramel, raisins and malt. For those of you new to chocolate Criollo trees are notoriously difficult to grow. Not only do they produce fewer pods containing even fewer seeds but they are more susceptible to disease. Why would anyone want to grow this seed variety? Well, the flavours and aromas that the Criollo producers are far better than those of the hardier Forastero, which accounts for more than 80% of the world's cocoa crop. 


The word "Chuao" actually refers to a small village on the north coast of Venezuela. Founded in the 16th century it was famous for its cacao plantations, producing very high quality cacao.

The aroma from this bar is certainly less intense to the Purist bar I tasted recently. However, for a 70% dark chocolate it has a certain intensity and there is a fruity acidity to the chocolate that lasts for a long time. It's also creamy and doesn't dry your mouth out which is so much more agreeable than the "With a Dash" Purist bar. I'm not picking up the nuts, caramel or malt flavours that are listed.


Overall it is a good bar of chocolate that is full of flavour. Unfortunately the price is very high and even though this is good quality chocolate £3.00 for a 35g bar is excessive. For that reason I'm going to give it 8/10 for flavour, 4/10 for price and 2/10 for packaging.


If you'd like to buy this bar click here.