From the stash of lost chocolates comes a bar from Valrhona, a company that is nearly synonymous with fine chocolate. After the extremely positive experience I had with the last Valrhona Grands Crus bar I tried I decided that I needed to see what else they had to offer and so on a recent trip to the store a Caraïbe bar found its way into my cart.

The Caraïbe bar is a 65% cacao content bar made from trinitarios beans and comes in a lovely, glossy box that is horribly hard to photograph. Inside the box the bar hides in a basic gold foil wrap. Upon opening the foil you find a bar that is absolutely beautiful. It’s cleanly molded with a light gloss and a nice deep chocolate color. It has a beautiful, clean snap which helps release it’s faint aroma of cocoa with some nice citrus to it. It’s a very light chocolate aroma, but very nice.

The description on the box says it has a “delicate flavor of almonds and roasted coffee” but that only begins to describe what I’m finding. There is some coffee there, but overall I find it to be lightly woody with a little coffee coming in on the front and giving way to a hint of vanilla riding above some light fruit notes that I’m interpreting as mandarin orange and a little apricot. It closes with a faintly bitter fruity note that I can’t place. It might just be the fading fruit overtop of the woody base, but I can’t say for sure. Confusion aside, the entire thing is carried off with an amazing smoothness that seems to be a Valrhona trademark.

There are a couple of interesting things about this bar. First, the fruit flavors in it are sweet flavors, but the chocolate itself isn’t sweet, which is kind of interesting. The other interesting thing to me was that the flavors are all very light. Nothing in it is really all that strong. It’s mellow and laid back and doesn't force itself on you. It's a wonderful chocolate to sit back and enjoy, but it doesn't leave a huge impression.

But how does it stack up? It's an excellent bar, but it doesn't quite measure up to the high standard that the Guanaja bar set. It's easily one of the best bars I've tried to date and as such I'm giving it a 9 out of 10. It's not perfect, but it's an excellent bar that doesn't take an effort to appreciate.