A chocolate treat

Some time ago I read about Soma Chocolate and became curious. Their microbatch chocolates that come from small bean batches from independent growers they work with directly sounded very interesting. I decided to order a bunch of their chocolate bars and sent an email with the order. This was at least a month ago now, I got a very nice reply saying that the availability of their bars was very variable and if I minded waiting while they collected the bars for the order. I said 'sure' and more or less forgot about it until today I found a package in the mail full of chocolate!

So far I have tried two of them. The 'old school' is a very old-fashioned mixture of cocoa nibs and cane sugar crystals ground together. The result is a very crunchy piece of chocolate full of texture and flavor, not like traditional chocolate at all but far more raw and simple. I can imagine how people used to eat chocolate this way before the modern processes of tempering and refining came along. The other one I tried is 'Arcana 100%', a blend of 4 beans without any additions of the usual sugar and emulsifiers. The result is the most intense piece of chocolate I have ever tasted, it is astringent, has quite a lot of acidity but also deep fruit flavor. Think of a hard-core Barolo that knocks your socks off, reduce it to its essense and turn in into a chocolate bar. Wow is all I can say!

I will be trying the others over the weekend, should be good...