Chocolate Review: Cacao Reserve by Hersheys

(Sao Tome) 70% Dark Chocolate

The cover says, "Rich and robust chocolate notes and hints of aromatic coffee." Hm...it's chocolate. Might it possibly have chocolate notes? Gosh! It does!

I'm not really picking up on the coffee hints, unless you're talking about the smell when you roast coffee, which smells mostly like, um, chocolate.

It's difficult to set aside dorky marketing. Puh-lease.

If anything, I would say there are hints of banana behind it all. Not the sweetness of bananas (it's 70% chocolate, after all), but the aftertaste of a slightly green banana. If most of the chocolates I've been eating lately have "earthy" notes to them, this has more accents of greenery, of growing things. It makes me wonder what cocoa plants smell like, in and of themselves. The texture is bloody awful, it's like eating something that's been caked together and dried out rather than melted -- that snap! you get from really good chocolate.

This would make a good baking chocolate, but it's just not decadent. The kind of chocolate you share with an aunt, not a lover. I guess I'm prejudiced -- it's just not what I'm looking for/in the mood for.