Chuao 75% – Dark Chocolate

Chuao by Chocolat Bonnat, dark and multi-layered

Chuao by Chocolat Bonnat is a dark chocolate made from the cocoa of a Venezuelan coastal village that can only be reached by sea. Dried fruit, floral notes, and a soft, never harsh bitterness alternate in the melt without one masking the other.

Chuao is a dark chocolate from Chocolat Bonnat in Voiron, France, ground from the cocoa of the village of the same name in Venezuela, with a 75 percent cocoa content. The 100-gram bar is one of the house's Grands Crus; the wrapper simply says Chocolat Chuao.

Dried fruit, blossoms, and dark warmth

The beginning tastes of dried fruit with a fine acidity, with a warm, earthy base underneath.

As the piece melts, the aromas take turns: first the fruit, then the floral trace, and finally that bitterness, which settles in softly instead of scratching. For such a high percentage of ground bean, the mass remains unusually smooth.

Paired with strong coffee, its dark side comes to the fore, while a mature red wine picks up on the dried fruit and prolongs it.

Take the first piece without accompaniment and let it melt completely, then all three stages will be revealed one after the other. Alongside dried figs and dates, it makes for a quiet dessert for the evening.

A sip of water in between resets the tongue, and the second piece begins again from the start.

A village reached only by the sea

Chuao lies on the Venezuelan coast, wedged between mountains and water, and no road leads there.

Anyone wanting to collect the harvest arrives by boat. The fruit is opened and fermented in the village, after which the beans are dried in the sun on the paved square in front of the village church, just as they have been for generations. A few hundred people live in the village, and the cocoa gardens begin immediately behind the houses.

Even in the eighteenth century, this cocoa was coveted at European courts and traded at a correspondingly high price; to this day, the village name stands for one of the most well-known origins of all.

The quantities remain small, everything is done by hand, and only a few houses receive beans from there at all. Chocolat Bonnat grinds them on their own, without blending in other origins.

The soil is dark and moist, the climate consistently warm, and together they shape the character that one finds again in the bar.

Why a single village gets its own bar

Commercial goods are usually sorted by country, but here the origin narrows down to a few kilometers of coastline.

The more narrowly defined the origin, the more clearly the soil, variety, and fermentation manifest in the taste; blended with other harvests, this difference disappears immediately. This is precisely why the village name is on the paper and not the country name. Anyone who tastes two Venezuelan origins side-by-side will stop speaking about chocolate in general terms thereafter.

Store it in a cool, dry place in its closed wrapper, as the floral tones are the first thing lost to heat.

Served at room temperature, it shows more than when cold, so take it out of the pantry half an hour beforehand.

Venezuela in other origins

Coming from the same country are the delicate Porcelana and the more robust Puerto Cabello. All other origins are listed in the Chocolat Bonnat collection.