Lake Champlain Organic Peru 70% Cocoa

Bold cocoa flavor, with some interesting spiciness underlying that note. It is reminiscent of pepper, but more subtle.  The aftertaste is slightly chalky, but not bothersome at all. A good effort for a mass-market bar. 7.1

Lake Champlain is a large lake that sits between New York and Vermont. I have sailed on it one summer many years ago on a 40-foot sailboat.  It was a fun trip with a good breeze.  Lake Champlain Chocolates makes a number of truffles and bars.  I am surprised that this is apparently the first of their bars I have reviewed.

Trader Joe's Chocolate Passport

 Each Year Trader Joe's sells a package of Single Origin chocolates from around the world that they called the Chocolate Palette. This year the package has a make-over and given a new name, the Chocolate Passport. In prior year the stack of bars was simply tied up with string. This year the bars are packaged in an open-faced box with a travel theme.

I have been tasting a few of the bars from the Passport, but I will not do a full review of each.  I reviewed them in 2009, and what I have tasted so far lines up with my prior impressions of the Palette. It is still a good introduction to single-origin chocolate. The review from 2009 can be found at:

Trader Joe's Chocolate Palette

Chocolat À L'Ancienne Noir 64% cocoa

Clean cocoa flavor, not complex and few side flavors. Very low bitterness, which is fairly expected for a 64% cocoa bar.  7.6

I like this bar a good deal more than the last Villars bar I tried:

Villars Maitre Swiss Dark Chocolate 72%

I also like the cool Coat of Arms that is on the surface of the bar:

This was a 50 gram (1.75 ounce) bar, and the serving size is listed as "1" -- that's the right way to serve up chocolate!  It is always hard to not eat the whole bar once you get going.

Amedei Cru Venezuela 70% cocoa

Once again Amedei brings it. Very nice combination of flavors, cherry and some berry. No bitterness at all, smooth from start to finish. Splendido! 9.1