The Chocolate Tree Ecuador 84%

84% Ecuadorian cocoa beans and the rest cane sugar. Without any extra cocoa butter, it simply meant the cocoa was purely Ecuadorian! I loved this, though it did suggest a slight hinderance of a potentially smoother texture

The Chocolate Tree, for their Ecuadorian bars, have sourced fine cacao from their partner Golden Bean. This single estate Sabor Arriba is rare and real. It's far from the imitating CCN-51 (a strain designed for yield opposed to flavour) of which often masquerades itself as "Arriba/Nacional" on single origin Ecuadorian chocolate - so don't be fooled. But like I said, this chocolate is truly Arriba. The Chocolate Tree work directly with organic farmers, paying them considerably higher than the going rate for cocoa, this encourages the growers to care for their heirloom cacao as well as sustaining biodiversity and fine flavour chocolate

A bold aroma. It initially had that alcoholic/urine tone, which I refined such description to Narcissus "paperwhite" flower. A flower with a concentrated aroma. The chocolate was heavy with prune and red wine, hints of date syrup, grape and earth. There was a delicate buzz of citrus orange which brought honey to the nose too

The snap gave a little *click* sound. The taste opened with cocoa, and then the prune/red wine/earthy notes from aroma could be tasted along with wood. I loved when a fruitiness/acidity could be tasted and felt on the tongue, though rare, it really refreshed the cocoa 'bitterness'. A deep roast was tasted too

The texture wasn't completely smooth, but considering there was no extra butter it was well refined and tempered. The long finish was cork, tannin, astringent, mildly sour with fragrant raisin being the very last note

I appreciate this fine chocolate for the extremely high quality it is. It had the characterises of true Nacional (Arriba) bean. Although there were a number of fruity notes, I personally would not consider it to be fruity. It was some great chocolate, but the flavour just wasn't the flavour I desire when it comes to cocoa. I had a preference for The Chocolate Tree's Madagascan bar

£5.95 for 90g can be purchased here