One More Maine Point: Equal Exchange Lemon Ginger Dark

This seems like a slightly redundant post on my part, because it concerns another trip to Maine. Yes, I actually drove up to Maine again within two weeks of my previous visit with Kat. (It only seemed like a bad idea while I was in the middle of the 9-hour drive. After that things shaped up nicely.) My good friend Stevie, who is a mutual friend of my siblings, was visiting me in the Hudson Valley, and we decided to drive up there again and say hi to the 4H clan. There were adventures a-plenty; we stayed up late talking about everything ranging from hypothetical dilemmas (would you want to know if you lived in The Matrix?) to bean-hole-bean-pit-beans; we jumped in the river; we ate Thai food; we bought coffee in two different coffee shops within twenty minutes; we had a major caffeine crash on the way back from Maine (fortunately, not a literal one); we BOUGHT CHOCOLATE.

It actually felt like a painfully brief visit, just like the previous one had. The working schedule of a professional musician is a very strange one, and it's always subject to last-minute changes and overhauls. A musician can't maintain any kind of professional reliability if they turn down work, which means that essentially nothing is more important than taking whatever gigs you can. This led to an all-too-short visit both times, since I had a gig the first time, and a rehearsal the second time. It's the career I've chosen, but it sometimes seems like a very brutal one. That's a story for an entirely different blog, though.

I bought several different bars of Chocolate in Maine, but this was the most interesting one:

Item: Organic Lemon Ginger Dark Chocolate with Black Pepper

Made By: Equal Exchange Chocolates
Made In: Switzerland
Purchase Price: Approx $4

Cacao Percentage: 55

Review: 

First of all, I should say that I don't usually consider 55% chocolate to be 'dark'. I typically think of anything above 70% as being dark, because anything below that can be overwhelmingly sweet. (Not to say that it always is overwhelmingly sweet. I do appreciate lighter chocolates.) I prefer for chocolates which are marketed as 'dark' to have a hearty, meal-like quality that's closer to black coffee than a Snickers Bar. That being said, I was taken aback at first by how sweet this bar was. It's definitely candy; no hearty meal here. There's a lot of candied Ginger in the bar, as well two different types of cane sugar. Sweetness like that is slightly off-putting to me at first, but after I've had a piece or two I usually warm up to it, and that's just what happened here. After taking a bite, it seems like the ginger and the lemon are almost perfectly balanced; for a second it seems like the lemon might be the dominant flavor, but then the taste of the lemon completely dies in the after-taste, and you're left with nothing but candied ginger. The chocolate flavor is not strong enough; this should be a 65% bar.

The texture is complicated, which can be bad, but in this case it works out pretty nicely. There are chewy/crunchy bits of candied ginger throughout, as well as smaller, less noticeable bits of black pepper. It's slightly distracting, but I don't mind it too much.

This is very good chocolate for the price, and I think they could have gotten something very special out of it if they had upped the percentage a little bit. Recommended, especially for fans of candy-esque chocolate.

-Will