Today I’m going to be tasting Valrhona’s Guanaja, a bar of chocolate that frightens and intimidates me in a horrible way. This is a far cry from the Chocolove that got me eating bars of chocolate again and light years from the chocolate I grew up with. It’s a chocolate so fine that I doubt my ability to properly appreciate it. I’m normally anything but shy about inflicting my ignorance on the world (with sledgehammer subtlety no less), but I generally don’t feel at all qualified to even discuss something as good as Valrhona. Today, though, I’m not going to let that stop me.

This is the first of Valrhona’s Grands Crus that I’ve tried. Previously I’ve had some of their more normal offerings (normal being a very relative term) and found them to be excellent and they left me eager to try what Valrhona considers a cut above. The Guanaja is a 70% cocoa dark chocolate made with Criollos and Trinitarios beans (85% of chocolate is made with Forastero beans which are considered somewhat inferior). The chocolate is, as expected, well formed with a nice light gloss, no imperfections, and no bubbles that I can discern. The aroma, to me, is nice with a both a subtle fruity note and a slightly sour burnt coffee note. The mouth feel is fabulous. It melts beautifully, isn’t astringent, and is very very smooth. The taste opens brightly with strong fruit notes – I’m tasting some kind of berries and melon maybe. The fruit note just gets stronger in the middle and is joined by some darker notes of molasses, coffee, and tobacco as well as some acidity, more fruits (raspberry and cherry?), and a sour note (sour cream or cream cheese? – strange, but I stand by it – that is what I taste). Lurking behind it all from the first taste is a very subtle floral note that really shines in the finish. The taste lingers forever and the floral and fruit notes are the last to fade.

I almost feel like I’m cheating by reviewing this bar. It is well known for the intensity of it’s flavors and that makes it ideal for somebody like me who often has trouble nailing down the flavor notes in a chocolate. In Guanaja Valrhona have built a bar that has amazingly intense flavors that all play together. Some are subtle, but none are overpowered and even with all of its intensity it doesn’t come across as heavy-handed at all. I would like to kid myself and think that my tastes are developing, but I think that the art involved in this bar just made things easy for me.

In the end I found this to be a wonderfully complex and balanced bar (which is amazing considering the incredible range of flavors present) that lives up to reputation and expectations alike. This is unlike anything I’ve enjoyed before and makes it very clear to me why Valrhona have the amazing reputation they do. I’d like to give it a 10, but I’ve been led to believe that Valrhona have even better and I’ve yet to try any Amedei so I have to leave at least some space for true perfection. So I’m giving it a 9.9 out of 10. This is an absolutely fantastic chocolate that has supplanted Scharffen Berger’s Jamaica á l'ancienne as my new favorite.

Oh, and sorry the picture is awful. I can't seem to get a good shot of the box and eventually just gave up. I may try again later, but for now that's as good as it gets.