E. Guittard: Venezuelan Dark Chocoale

While I wasn’t a big fan of the first couple of truffles I tried from The Chocolate Soldier, they did offer a selection of E. Guittard chocolate bars. E. Guittard is noted for their single-origin chocolate offerings, and I picked up the Sur del Lago Bittersweet bar, which has 65% cocoa solids that come entirely from Venezuelan beans.

Since several top-notch brands, such as Valrhona and El Rey, exclusively use Venezuelan beans, I was excited to experience the flavor that $4 bought me.

The texture is quite smooth, especially for a darker chocolate, but verges a bit on waxy. Taste-wise, there are milk and vanilla undertones, and a bit of a coffee aftertaste. The chocolate is fairly mild overall, which meant that there was no need to over-sweeten the chocolate to cut through the bitterness, so the chocolate flavors came through quite well. I’d say it’s not quite as good as the Valrhona dark chocolates, especially in light of the waxy texture, and is a tad pricier, but is still a fairly high-quality bar.