I got my next order of chocolate on Tuesday but I didn't get a chance to sample it until tonight. I wanted to give each bar proper treatment so I had to make sure I had time to take photos and taste carefully.
I ordered my chocolate from A Taste For Chocolate this time since my other place doesn't stock Amedei and I wanted to try that brand.
Today I tried the Valrhona Grand Cru Caraïbe, a 66% cocoa bar made of beans from the Caribbean. The beans are of the Trinitario variety, which is a hybrid between the common, hardy Forastero cocoa plant and the higher quality but less hardy Criollo cocoa plant. According to Wikipedia, 95% of the world production of cocoa is Forastero while the rest is split between Trinitario and Criollo.
So anyway, the bar was very mild and easy to eat. The flavour was good but not particularly strong or interesting. I checked the Valrhona website and noticed that you can get the same chocolate with slivers of hazelnuts. I think that would be a better bar as the hazelnuts would not have to fight with the flavour of the chocolate (since it's mild). Plus hazelnuts are just awesome. So overall...good chocolate but I probably won't get it again.
In other news I had my first (of three) lead climbing course on Monday and it went really well. We spent the first class learning how to clip the rope as you climb. After practicing again on Wednesday I have it down pretty well. It makes the climb a lot harder though because you have to keep stopping to clip, which requires you to hang off one arm while hauling the rope up with the other. As if there wasn't enough to do with your arms on a climb as it was. But it was fun and will open up a lot more climbing to me so I'm pretty excited.
Anyway here are some photos of the chocolate.
