Valrhona Manjari, dark chocolate chips

Seuls les puristes en chocolat acheteront du Mandjari. Impossible à trouver en magasin, même les chocolatiers ne connaissent pas. (ce qui m'inquiète un peu parfois...) Bref, fruité, long en bouche. Un délice.

Lecker ,einfach nur gut!

The small chocolate disks (feves) were clearly still fresh, not whitened or dull, not partially melted and resolidified, etc. (A few reviewers complained of that--and their orders may indeed have contained stale, post-expiration-date chocolate.) The date on the bag I obtained (stamped by Valrhona itself on the bag, which is the original one) is well before the expiration date set by the manufacturer. The fragrance is wonderful, the semisweet/bittersweet flavor excellent, with the characteristic fruity, slightly tart quality characteristic of the Manjari line. I expect that, as with other couverture chocolate I've worked with, I can fairly easily temper the chocolate for enrobing candy, etc. But the flavor of the disks themselves is so good that one can happily just snack, straight out of the bag. As for the price, $99 may initially sound high, but the bag contains 6.6 pounds of chocolate--a great deal--so the price per ounce is a bargain for chocolate of this very high quality. Highly recommended (assuming future shipments will be equally fresh).

For many products, the "best by" date is not a date after which the product won't be useable. There is a lot of press currently about food waste caused by these dates. However, with chocolate, the product does oxidize and after some shelf life period, it will show signs of age, both physically turning a bit white, and in terms of taste, old chocolate does not taste as good. This product was expensive and for that cost, I would not expect that it would be past the date on the bag -- yet it was delivere past the use date marked on the bag. I chose this product because it was in the original packaging. A common problem buying chocolate online is that many resellers, including many on Amazon, repackage chocolate. That eliminates evidence of the manufacturers' date and increases the potential for receiving expired chocolate. The only solution I have found is to buy directly from Valrhona or another producer, none of which sells through Amazon.

While these have a nice bright chocolate flavor, they also have a crunchy, kind of wax like texture that is unpleasant. They don't seem to really melt in your mouth, and instead crunch when you chew them. Not great.