Taza Chocolate Mexicano
30 Jun
Taza Chocolate is a small chocolate maker in Somerville, Massachusetes that uses traditional Mexican stone mills to grind organic, fair trade cacao beans to create a unique and intensely flavored chocolate. The ingredients list pretty much says it all: Dominican cacao beans, cane sugar, Costa Rican cinnamon. That’s it. At least for the flavor we’ll be trying today: Cinnamon. They also offer Vanilla Bean, Guajillo Chili and Salted Almond. It took me awhile to decide which one to try at $4 a pop, it’s a big decision.
Packaging
I’ll admit the packaging is one of the things that drew me to this product in the first place. It’s technically a bar, but round in form. Reminded me of soap! Each flavor featured a different color, the Vanilla was black, Chili green and Almond brown, so Cinnamon is red, natch.
Appearance
Taste
When I opened the package a wall of chocolate and cinnamon hit me. That paper wrapper surprisingly keeps it all in. As I thought, a solid wheel of chocolate candy with the Taza brand name emblazoned on it. Breaking a piece off, I could see the inside and the shiny crystals (like when you break open a rock) of sugar and a rough interior. It wasn’t easy to break a piece of either, this is one solid piece of chocolate.
It smells even more amazing up close. The spicy cinnamon and raw chocolate is a smell I can only hope will be made into a perfume. The first bite filled my mouth with the scent of bananas, oddly enough. Really ripe bananas. Which is odd because I can also very much taste the cinnamon, but since I hate overly ripe bananas, this makes it hard for me to eat. The chocolate itself is very gritty, a component of the stone ground beans, which makes for a nice change in texture. I definitely will be going back and giving vanilla or almond a try. I think the cinnamon version just is a little too much for my tastes.
June 30th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I’ve never seen it before! Where can one buy it? That’s unfortunate about the banana taste. I wonder if it’s connected to the unprocessed raw chocolate? Without the roasting, who knows. Let’s hope it’s just the cinnamon flavor. The vanilla and almond sound promising! Recently tried the salted-chocolate almonds at Trader Joe’s. Definitely an intriguing flavor combination.
I’m so glad you’re willing to burn your taste buds off, just to give us an accurate account of a chocolate product. Thanks!
July 1st, 2009 at 4:43 am
[...] Taza Chocolate is a small chocolate maker in Somerville, Massachusetes that uses traditional Mexican stone mills to grind organic, fair trade cacao beans to create a unique and intensely flavored chocolate . The ingredients list pretty …More [...]
July 16th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
[...] you’ll recall from an earlier episode, Cocoazilla tried Taza Chocolate in the flavor of cinnamon with mixed results. And as promised, we obtained another flavor to see if [...]