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Dolfin

Monday, May 8, 2006

Dolfin: Anise and Red Pepper

For a long time I was looking for the Dolfin chocolate in two flavors - Green Aniseed and Red Peppercorn. I finally gave up on finding them in stores (and believe me, I’ve been to a lot of stores) and ordered online from Chocosphere (I recommend them).

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Both bars are dark chocolate (52% cacao) and feature more savory flavors than many other bars. I like the packaging because I know I’m not going to be able to finish a bar quickly and it enables me to save it and keep it fresh.

A L’Anis Vert - Dark Chocolate with Green Aniseed - I happen to love the combination of anise/licorice and chocolate. Anise is generally a milder flavor than licorice. In fact, it’s more of the licorice flavor without the sweetness. It’s mellow and woodsy with a little floral note to it. The anise also seems to bring out the vanilla notes in this chocolate. The bar is studded with aniseeds, which is sometimes a little clumsy as they can be quite fibery and crunchy. The anise flavor permeates the chocolate, so the flavor goes through and through with bursts of it around the seeds.

I know that the concept behind the Dolfin bars is that the spice or fruit is actually in there, but I might prefer just the flavor. I felt the same way about the mint bar I tried last year.

Au Poivre Rose - Dark Chocolate with Pink Peppercorn - this bar smells wonderfully peppery and slightly sweet. The chocolate is smooth, dark and has a slight bitter edge. There’s a slight burn to the whole thing and of course the mild hints of peppercorn throughout. The bar is also studded with peppercorns which give the bar a little crunch like a nibby bar with a spicy bite. It’s never unpleasantly hot though. It reminds me of carnations which always have that wonderful sweet spicy smell to them.

This one is definitely a winner in my book, but what’s fun is having them together. It’s a good flavor combination as they’re both woodsy, spicy flavors. I still prefer the chocolate from Dagoba but they don’t really have these flavor combinations, so it’ll never be an apples to apples comparison.

The best indication of tastiness when eating more than one bar is which one is finished first. The Red Peppercorn won by three sections.

Name: Red Pepper and Green Aniseed Dark Chocolate
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Dolfin
Place Purchased: Chocosphere.com
Price: $3.45 each plus shipping
Size: 2.47 ounces
Calories per ounce: unknown
Categories: Chocolate, Belgium, Dolfin

POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:02 am    

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Dolfin Variety Tasting Squares

I was on a kick to find the Dolfin Peppercorn bar and stopped at the same liquor store that my husband bought the previous assortment. No luck. But they did have this assortment of tasting squares that I picked up.

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There are 24 squares in the package, 12 flavors.

Cafe Noir - dark chocolate with coffee bean bits. I’m kind of tired of the whole idea of throwing something that I generally regard as garbage in my chocolate. There are ways of getting coffee flavor into my chocolate without putting the actual beans in there.
Cafe Lait - sweet and milky but not a lot of coffee flavor to it, more cinnamon than I would have liked.
Au Lait - Nice, milky and sweet but lacking a real chocolate punch.
Lait Cannelle - milk chocolate with real cinnamon in it. Lots and lots of real cinnamon chips. The whole chips give a good sweet and spicy feel to the chocolate, but it all seems just a tad sweet. The scent, however, is absolutely mouthwateringly good and I’d like a perfume made of it.
Noir 88% - beautiful snap and creamy mouth feel without being chalky. Light and smoky with a good bitter and dry finish.
Noir 70% - sweeter and more buttery than the 88%, good chocolate kick, less dry but still nicely astringent.
Noir 52% - mellow and smoky with a really creamy base to it. Not bitter but not as smooth as it could be. When tasting their pure chocolate, I’ve come to believe that it’s just not as smooth as some of the other Belgian and European varieties I’ve tried.
Noir Nougatine (shown above unwrapped) - dark chocolate with hard nougat pieces (like a Toblerone). The dark chocolate is sweet and smooth and the nougat bits provide a nice little honey sweet break in the chocolate.
Lait Nougatine - very sweet, which keeps the nougat bits from popping out as well as they do on the Noir.
Orange - wonderful, great buttery chocolate with a good aromatic hit of orange, probably my favorite in this batch.
Citron - dark chocolate with the slightest hint of sweet lemon. It’s not zesty, just a pleasant aromatic feel to the chocolate.
Earl Grey - dark chocolate with black tea and bergamot. I didn’t really get a strong sense of the flavor here, just a black tea earthy flavor. There was a little grit because of the real tea leaves.

I think I prefer chocolate that comes in a slightly thicker piece. These very thin tasting wafers seem just slightly chalky to me and I’d prefer something with a bit more tooth to it.

I’m still looking forward to the Pink Peppercorn and Anise bars (which I ordered from Chocosphere) but I think I may prefer Dagoba and Lake Champlain as an overall brand to Dolfin.

Name: 24 Chocolats de Degustation
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Dolfin
Place Purchased: Silverlake Liquor (on Silverlake Blvd. - LA)
Price: $5.99
Size: 3.76 ounces
Calories per ounce: unknown
Categories: Chocolate, Coffee, Belgium, Dolfin

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:22 am    

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Dolfin Chocolate Bars

Name: Dolfin Chocolat: Noir au Gingembre Frais, Au Lait au The Vert Sencha du Japon, Noir aux Fuelles de Menthe
Brand: Dolfin
Place Purchased: Liquor Store (Silverlake Blvd. near Effie in Los Angeles)
Price: $3.00 (I think)
Size: 2.47 ounces
Calories per ounce: unknown
Type: Chocolate

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I thought on the eve of the start of Whalewatch Season here in Southern California it was appropriate to review something under the brand name Dolfin (we see more dolphins on whale watching trips than whales anyway). The Man bought these bars for me recently at a wine & spirits store in our neighborhood. The gentrification of our little ‘hood means that the former liquor store now carries a wider selection of wines, beers and of course Belgian chocolate.

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What drew him to the bars wasn’t the reviews but the fact that the bars are packaged in these plastic cloaked paper envelopes that reminded him of tobacco pouches. It’s actually a pretty simple and successful idea, a long bag that you fold over several times to keep a good seal. The bars inside are additionally sealed in little plastic sleeves but at 2.47 ounces, I wasn’t going to eat them all in one sitting and I appreciated having a clean and crisp way of carrying them around until I do.

Noir aux Fuelles de Menthe (Dark with Mint Leaves): Instead of being your common dark chocolate bar with mint oils in it, this bar contains real spearmint leaves. This was the least successful bar for me. The mint was nice and it being spearmint was a nice change from the more common peppermint, but the bar seemed a bit more chalky than the others. At first I thought it had bloomed, but the sheen was right and the snap looked good. I can only assume that it’s the interaction of the real mint leaves in there. They also make the bar kind of grainy. The sugar balance is good though and the mint is smooth and has some good tannins in it that mix well with the rich dark chocolate.

Noir au Gingembre Frais (Dark with Fresh Ginger): I’m a ginger nut and many of the ginger/chocolate combinations that I find are with milk chocolate, so finding one that was in dark chocolate is exciting. The bar had a good woodsy mix of scents - the spicy ginger and smoky chocolate. The dark chocolate is only 52% cacao (as is the mint one) but it just felt really rich and dense. It was a little grainy but had a lot of flavors in the mix with a good buttery base to help the ginger and chocolate mingle.

Au Lait au The Vert Sencha du Japon (Milk with Sencha Green Tea from Japan): Wow, this bar smells like green tea ice cream. The wonderful lightly floral and woodsy tea blends wonderfully with the delicately dairy tasting milk chocolate. The bar is smooth and very sweet except for the green tea bits. It makes the bar better for doing a bit of chewing before letting it melt on the tongue instead of leaving a tab of it on the tongue first. This is definitely a bar that I could eat a lot of and I’m hoping that even though it only has 32% cacao, the benefits of both the green tea and chocolate will bring me good health in the new year.

Dolfin has a huge line of these “creation” bars, including Masala (hot spices), aniseed, pink peppercorn and Earl Grey tea. They have boxes with tasting squares that look like they would make for a fun evening.

Rating - 7 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:01 am     CandyReviewDolfinChocolateGingerMints7-Worth ItBelgium

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