Quick Hits: The WILD THING
From the depths of the Bolivian jungle comes an untamed bean, daring the world to even try to work with it. And it turns out that the folks at Lillie Belle Farms were totally up to that challenge. They took wild criollo beans harvested the jungle and made this lovely 68% cacao content bar of chocolate out of them. They call it The Wild Thing. I saw it at the New York Chocolate Show in 2007 and ended up getting just about everything except for this. When I went back in 2008 I fully intended on making up for the omission and so I took one home with me (among other things).
I'm not going to over think this one. The bar is thick, well-formed with the logo on the face, and has a heckuva snap to it. The aroma is mellow and has a hint of spice hiding behind a nice front of cocoa. The taste is clean and bright. I don't know if I was expecting something raw and brutal - the chocolate equivalent of a slap in the face. What I found was bright and mellow and smooth as the day is long. It's good a good chocolate flavor with hints of some darker things I just can't figure out. They're hints. My taste might be off because I was having this with the last of my wine from dinner (a fruity pinot noir - lotsa berries), but I'm just finding smooth mellow chocolate with a few darker hints around the edges. I feel bad that I can't find more to talk about. Sometimes I just fail. But it's a really good chocolate.
So "really good" is my impression, but that's not a score. If I had to assign a number at this point in the game I'd run with a 8.75 out of 10. It's really good stuff and worth trying out.
Oh, and sorry about the picture quality. Sophie is an action rabbit. Well, when she isn't being an inaction rabbit. But in this case it was hard to get a shot of her with the label not being thrown about. The label was empty because I was eating the chocolate and I didn't want to post a boring picture of an empty label. So you get a sorta-blurry rabbit amidst the giant mess of hay she's made in her cage.
