CACAOTECA Chocolate TASTINGS – Part 2

Welcome to the second part of my two-part Cacaoteca Chocolate tasting. Today I am tasting the Cacaoteca Oscuro Dark 78% and the Cacaoteca Oscuro Dark 84%. Before we get started, I want to drop a few notes here for anyone relatively new to chocolate tastings.

Quick Tips on Chocolate Tastings for Beginners

When doing a tasting, I suggest tasting bars in order of cacao content, starting with the lowest cacao content first and ending with the highest cacao percentage. If you want to do a fun opposite example once, however, try the reverse order. Chances are you will quickly discover why it’s the uncommon, bad-tasting order of operations!

That said, please don’t waste Cacaoteca chocolate on that experiment!

First, smell the chocolate after unwrapping it. The smell could also be different after it melts a bit in your hand. You want to snap off a small corner of the bar (good quality dark chocolate will have more snap – milk chocolate, not so much) and let it sit in your mouth. It helps if you close your eyes and breathe through your nose.

As it melts, the first flavors of the bar gradually hit… and the after-flavor (approximately 30 seconds in) may be quite different from the first! Also, good chocolate should leave an almost clean feeling in your mouth after a short time – not too much residue.

Check out a sample flavor wheel below – this can help you get started! There are many chocolate flavor wheels, but this is a nice simple one.

A Note on Dominican Republic Cacao

The Dominican Republic, where Cacaoteca is located, is well-known for its Trinitario Cacao (10-15% of world’s cacao production). Trinitario is a high-quality hybrid bean – a combination of Criollo beans (2-5% of the global chocolate market) and Forastero beans (80-85% of the global chocolate market). Trinitario cacao from this region delivers an exceptionally unique and delicious flavor, and it’s precisely that which I’ll be enjoying today! 

Bar #3 – Cacaoteca Oscuro Dark 78%

This bar is fantastic for so many reasons. Its beautiful, artistic packaging leads the way to a wonderful bar opening, featuring the slight hint of a very unique and appealing fruit scent. If you look at the bar itself under good lighting, it shines with a nice sheen, an almost cinnamon color (cinnamon coloring tends to be a very good sign on dark chocolate bars).

When you snap off your first corner, it sounds perfect, a clean break from the bar with no crumbling. When you finally taste the bar, it doesn’t taste like a typical 78% bar. Instead, it’s sweeter, with a light fruity component that doesn’t overtake the bar.

Once it sits in your mouth for a few moments, you’ll experience a more fudgy flavor and creamy texture as well. Other people report flavors of cheese and hay, but I didn’t get either of those thankfully!

This bar features the typical Cacaoteca granular texture that I love, which lasts throughout the duration of the tasting. Also, while other bars over 77% can easily lose any sweetness thanks to the higher cacao percentage, that does not happen here. Cacaoteca roasted these beans to perfection.

Its listed tasting notes are earthy, wood.

Bar ​Ingredients: cocoa mass, cane sugar, cocoa butter

If you’ve yet to experience dark chocolate with fruity, sweet undertones, this bar is a great way to begin that experiment. I know many people fear high-percentage cacao bars, but this is a solid starting point. It’s easy to diagram on a flavor wheel, and a good one to start in your chocolate journal.

I have the 33 BARS choclate journal pictured above (as well as another not pictured), and to give more consistency to my tastings, I’ll be using one of these going forward.

You can find the Cacaoteca Oscuro Dark 78% bar online right here (Chocolate Connoisseur affiliate link).

Bar #4 – Cacaoteca Oscuro Dark 84%

I love this bar. I really do, but 84% is about my top range of cacao enjoyment, and I prefer well-crafted bars up to about 78%. For ultra dark-chocolate bar lovers (aside from you die-hard 100%’ers!) this shines, it’s a great bar.

When you snap a corner off, there is a clean snap to the bar, and a reflective sheen to the bar. I don’t really see a lot of cinnamon color, however, because it’s so dark. This one pulled some moisture from my mouth to the bar, resulting in a little dryness. Definitely some bitterness to the bar, featuring earthy notes.

That said, this 84% bar is great to test in a full lineup to see just how high you like cacao content. It’s good chocolate, which means if you don’t like it, you might be at your highest range. Also, remember, all chocolate is subjective, so if Cacaoteca isn’t your thing at the end of tasting this lineup, that’s perfectly fine. There are hundreds of other bars out there with your name on them!

You can find this bar online here (CC affiliate link), and friendly reminder, Cacaoteca does NOT sell their bars individually on their own website as of right now (although we do hope that changes in the near future).

Its listed tasting notes are earthy, strawberry, slight acidity.

Bar Ingredients: cocoa mass, cane sugar