The great chocolate tour continued: Wally's

Today we journeyed to Wally's Fine Wines. I know that might sound like it has nothing to do with chocolate but stay with me, we'll get there. First up was a breakfast of pancakes across the street from Wally's at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel. Me and Zayda have a tradition of having pancakes somewhere before chocolate. We then went across the street to Wally's.

The collection of chocolates there was curated by none other than Jessica, a friend of mine and also the curator of the chocolate at Farmshop. Read about that on a previous blog post. So anyway, there was a notable difference between the two selections, even though they were by the same person. The pieces at Farmshop were all bars, whereas this selection contained truffles and bonbons and the like. But of course, it also had bars.

I selected three bars from the large collection. A bar from Letterpress, and old favorite and the supplier of one of the bars for the CEO tasting/lecture (read about that in another previous blog post), a bar from somewhere called Castronovo, and something called MG Chocolate. We got the bars, left, and I went home to taste them.

The Castronovo one (70% cacao) was very fruity, which made sense, as the beans were from Colombia, a place with either fruity or coffee-ish tastes. Both tastes are very powerful, so chocolatiers rely heavily on the conching stage to temper the flavor a bit.

The MG Chocolate bar (40% cacao) was also very fruity, as the beans were from Madagascar, a place very far from the equator, and the farther away the beans are from the equator, the fruiter the taste. Compare Hawaiian chocolate and Namibian chocolate, for instance. Of course, there are exceptions.

The final bar, from Letterpress (70% cacao also), was of an unknown origin, as I simply could not place the flavor, the label is partially blocked in the photo, and I just plain forgot. But it had a slight caramelly taste, so it was a South American country, perhaps Bolivia or Peru. And that is the end.

Here I am holding the three bars we bought. As you can see, the origin of the Letterpress bar is blocked, so we shall never know exactly where that bar came from until we go back to Wally's.

Update

I found out where the mysterious Letterpress bar was from. Turns out, it does not come from anywhere near South America. The beans in that bar were harvested in Tanzania. And now that is the end.