Fran's Madagascar 75% Cacao

                                   

About: Fran's chocolates are made in Seattle and sold at four locations. Their website features Fran herself, a kind-looking matron who knows how to make chocolate, even if the photos only demonstrate her stirring stuff with a spoon. They make high-end looking chocolates in multiple flavors and styles and nicely upscale looking wrappers.

Flavor:  This is a fruity, pleasant bean-to-bar chocolate, with a slightly sour flavor that I, for no reason, associate with (over?) fermentation. I wouldn't know over-fermented chocolate if it greeted me in the street wearing an 'I'm overly fermented chocolate" shirt and proclaiming so on a bullhorn. So better way to read this is that the initial enthusiasm on masticating one of these tasty morsels and thinking "what ho! such fruitiness" is followed by a slightly retrograde 'egads, sour!" But some people may like that.

Texture: Smooth enough, but at only at the "we make our own chocolates but we aren't industrial" level. So this won't blow your mind, even if it blows you budget.

My rating:  A  6 for good flavor that's better than average, held back from a 7 because of ... sour.

Rating Value	Meaning
1	Really bad chocolate. There's something just really really wrong here in almost every imaginable respect.
2	A bar with this rating has at least two drawbacks.
3	A bar where something is starting to get seriously wrong.... for example, really weak flavor with an otherwise acceptable texture.
4	This bar is below average, but just slightly. Mostly it's not worth eating again. Something isn't quite up to par, for example a poor texture but fine flavor.
5	This is an average good bar that's worth eating. There's nothing really wrong with it, but also nothing particularly spectacular. Or, perhaps it has a good characteristic that's evenly counter-weighted by something weak.
6	A solidly good bar with one characteristic that's above par, for example a great texture.
7	An solidly good chocolate that has two above par characteristics, but nothing mind-blowing. Good, above average flavor, but nothing to die for.
8	An excellent bar with no weaknesses and at least one characteristic that's super.
9	An awesome bar to die for with amazing texture and flavor.
10	You have been touched by God.

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