Favorite Chocolates of 2023
Join me for a look back at my favorite chocolates of 2023! You can also listen to my year-end episode below, and then I’d love to hear your own favorites from the last year!
Standout Chocolate Sambirano Madagascar 70%
The gloss on this bar is almost reflective it’s so shiny, and gives a correspondingly hard snap and slow melt on the tongue. As soon as I opened the package and smelled the bar, I wrote down “smells like sunlight.” I realize that’s thoroughly unhelpful, and I don’t know what to tell you. I saw late morning sun shining over low mountains, a warm valley dotted with trees. The bar’s slow melt delivers honey with a warming, fruity acidity carrying red berry, pomegranate, and orange peel as it slowly and silkily dissolves.
Monsoon Bachelor’s Hall Estate Jamaica 85%
This was, surprisingly, my first ever Monsoon bar, but won’t be my last. A lovely green, floral garden aroma leads off, with notes of lily bud and betel leaf with faint nutmeg and walnut skin. The palate, however, is more indulgent, with cashew butter and frangipane, golden brownie, and toasted nilla wafer. Such a unique and intriguing bar from a maker I need to get to know better.
Chocobien Aged 70% Peru Criollo Yirgacheffe 12 Months
These little chocolate buttons were aged with Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee beans and took on so much character from these bold beans. The aroma is rich mocha, and the flavor adds some gentle spice from the coffee to that mocha base. Very fresh coffee aroma with notes of Vietnamese cinnamon. I used these little buttons in place of chocolate chips in a cookie recipe I came up with using a grassy Jamaicain rum, caramelized bananas, and cinnamon, and it was fantastic.
Chocolarder Virunga Eastern Congo 75%
Confession: This was my first bar from Chocolarder. Spicy florals in the aroma belie fudgy, nutty, brownie batter flavors. Some sweet floral notes, grassiness, and a bit of oak on the finish, along with very mild young strawberry note.
Pump Street Crayfish Bay Organic Estate Saint Mark Grenada 70%
This is such a lovely and unique bar. The aroma hints at notable acidity with notes of tart blueberry, pomegranate, and dried cranberry, with supporting aromas of granola and almond. The flavor is bright but not as acidic as the nose indicated: sweet blueberry and candy cherry, muffin top, and blackberry. Fantastic.
Stranger Dominican Republic Oko Caribe 70%
My friend London Coe moved heaven and earth to source chocolate from this Ukrainian maker in 2023, and I’m so grateful she did. This bar is gorgeous. The bar is thick and sturdy with a hard snap, but melts silkily with notes of honey and red juju fruit and fig, with rich and regal chocolate all around. Just a touch of salt on the finish. It’s amazing to think something this poised and graceful came out of an area of the world being torn apart by violence. Beautiful.
Chequessett Maushop’s Smoke
This 65% dark chocolate is made with elderberry oat milk and smoked Lapsang Souchong tea. The aroma is subtle but beguiling, with fresh wood smoke and light savory meatiness. The palate takes those aromas and soaks them into its architecture, like the smell of barn or a cabin with a fireplace in which every wood surface is saturated in the fires of decades. After that smoke recedes a bit, there’s some vegetal green tea and a very quiet fruitiness and some oatmeal. This bar is most cozy and evocative. Amazing.
Ratza Chocolate JujuBeet 80% Dark
I love beets, and I’m excited any time I see a beer or chocolate made with them. Few ingredients offer a combination of earthy funk and comforting sweetness like this (chanterelle mushrooms are another example). Ratza’s JujuBeet bar is an 80% dark chocolate made with beet juice, spirulina (not spirula, as the front of the wrapper says—just a typo), and dried jujube dates. The bar smells like gorp—the nutty trail mix with peanuts, raisins, and often M&Ms or chocolate chips—and there are definitely aspects of that in the flavor as well, though it moves more into dried apple chips and earthy sweet beets with a pleasant balance of sweetness and acidity from the high cacao percentage, with a bit of a vinous impression.
You can read the lists for favorite beers and beer & chocolate pairings as well. Happy holidays!