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Product Description:
Great Bean is on a mission to deliver the highest possible state of wellbeing through raw, organic chocolate. After working as a professional chocolatier in Austin, Texas, founder Nora Hamerman became well known throughout town for her creations. In 2012, she set out to create an innovative, healthy, and environmentally-conscious chocolate company. Great Bean chocolate was born to nourish, indulge, and regenerate.
I received this bar of chocolate in my February Knoshbox.
Tea Suggestion:
I like eating chocolate bars with a cup of pure black tea, preferably one with a natural chocolate-y tone to it. However, because of the lovely notes of cinnamon in this tea, I thought that I’d select a tea with a slightly spicy intonation, like this Grand Yunnan Imperial from Le Palais de Thés. It was an excellent pairing, I like the way the warmth of the tea brought out some of the deeper flavors of the chocolate bar, and the sweet fruit notes of the tea accentuated the flavor of the fig in the confection.
What I Think:
It’s chocolate! OK, I’ve got a confession … I tend to ‘hoard’ my gourmet chocolate bars that I receive in these boxes for times when I really need … good chocolate. That’s why … I haven’t reviewed this chocolate bar until now.
This is really yummy. I am not always as excited about raw chocolate as I am for roasted chocolate, because the roasting of the cacao bean brings out some really lovely flavors in the chocolate. But the combination of the fig, cinnamon and herbs really works to the raw chocolate’s advantage, I think.
There is a really sharp snap to the dark chocolate. The cinnamon melds beautifully with the chocolate to give it a warm flavor … something that I think would be “lacking” in the raw chocolate otherwise. The cinnamon sort of gives this candy bar that sort of warmth that it needs. In addition to the herbs I taste sea salt and of course – the fig! I love the fig in this bar! It adds a neat texture that is chewy and the seeds of the fig crackle in my mouth! And it’s sweet and really quite yummy.
My Final Thoughts:
The bar is not overly sweet, it is a good balance of bitter and sweet flavors. There is a really nice depth of flavor to this bar … it’s a delicious, multi-dimensional candy bar. It is at once bitter, sweet, salty, and just … INTERESTING to eat!
Hungry in Portland 