Akesson's Single Plantation Chocolate 75% Trenitario Cocoa with Red Pepper

About: I bought this bar in a market in Singapre, and I assumed this was a Swedish chocolate. I mostly assumed right, as Akesson's own plantations first in Madagascar and then in Brazil and Indonesia. It is a (Swedish) family run business focusing on single source cocoa (the name of which was designated by a Swede, it seems!), with almost all the bars at 75% or more. They threw in a white chocolate and a 45% and 55% bar for the hoi poloi, shrug.

Their bars are available world-wide, but you can still find a list of every shop that sells them on their website, so it's not the distribution machine of a major producer. I had high expectations, but I didn't look carefully when buying the bar...

Flavor: The bottom line here is that I prefer my pepper on steak, not chocolate. The pepper hits you first when you eat this chocolate, with a one-two punch that it's hard to come back from. The chocolate itself only kicks in a long time later, with a rich, smooth, earthy flavor..... that your indifferent and shell-shocked taste buds will not thank you for.


Texture:The pepper is crunchy. The chocolate is relatively smooth.

My rating:  I don't know what to say. I would definitely get another bar of theirs to try, but this one is not to my liking. If I were rating purely on execution, it would be a 7 or 8, for the texture, flavor, etc. But for me, this is a never-come-back-again 3 or 4. I can't get past the pepper.

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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