[Pigging by Wilfrid: July 6, 2009]
Just as well the bar of the W Tuscany is air-conditioned. Because you wouldn't want this lot melting.
This lot being a vast array of "handcrafted" chocolates carpeting the bar and spilling over onto chairs and tables. The occasion?
A complimentary tasting of Bissinger's best, hosted by chocolatier and engineer Terry Wakefield. Bissinger's is a St Louis-based boutique chocolate-maker which can trace its history back to France, and the court of the Sun King, Louis Quatorze. I bet you didn't know that. I didn't know much about chocolate either until Terry Wakefield started talking: the man - with a history in industrial and chemical R&D as well as a background in chocolate production - is a born teacher.
I didn't know, for example, that the chocolates I ate in my English childhood owe their distinctive caramelized flavor to a British tendency to burn the milk. Or that Hershey's chocolates are deliberately soured, because customers rebelled many years ago when they first started using pasteurised rather than (sourer) unpasteurised milk. Or that mainstream American chocolates are sweeter than European because plenty of milk and sugar was needed to make South American cocoa beans palatable - Europe used beans from Africa. Or that the cloying, tongue-coating mouthfeel some chocolates produce is a function of particle size.
I am now an expert, as you can see. What I also learned - and this was less surprising - is that tasting a dozen rich and powerful chocolates in the course of an hour almost knocks me out. Whether it's the sugar rush or some onslaught on the trigeminal nervous system, I was getting needles to the temples before we were done here. I can handle tasting a dozen, two dozen wines, with greater ease, and I am lost in admiration of those who can ingest sweetness in this quantity without adverse side-effects.
Of course, that's just my reaction. We are not to blame the chocolates. We tasted twelve, as I said, with palate-cleansing breaks for the company's prize-winning poink grapefruit/grapseseed extract gummy bears (which don't, as the chocolatier proudly noted, stick to your teeth). It all started simply with chocolate buttons made from organic chocolate. Of course (of course), most organic chocolate used here is imported from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and it's not easy to find the best quality. Indeed, the milk chocolate buttons were a little chalky.
The parade of truffles and bons bons which followed was more exciting. The olive oil truffle brushed with salt is engineered so that chocolatey sweetness hit first, followed after a distinct pause by the fruity oil. The knockout of the tasting was the porcini mushroom truffle with cocoa nibs. Authentic earthy mushroom flavors, and although all the truffles had a long finish, the mushroom seemed to haunt the mouth for minutes. This is a very adult after-dinner chocolate. As is the Courvoisier XO - not a liquid-filled item, as I'd expected, but a truffle with strong cognac flavors mixed with white chocolate in the center. Fig truffles were dense, grainy, and scented with cardamom.
Just for fun, malted milk balls. Then another grown-up selection, crisp, chocolate-coated Sumatra espresso-beans. Bissinger's makes a range of barks too, absurdly colorful.
I think it was the pumpkin bark which finished me off. Rich, buttery, and certainly packed with pumpkin flavor, as I ate it I wondered if I would ever be able to eat chocolate again. Then came the sugar plum truffle: all the apricot, plum, nut and spice flavor of a Christmas cake in one bite. Yes, I'd drink Pedro Ximenez with this, and please help me to the door. Okay, one bite of the black sesame if you insist.
I flew up Madison Avenue.
In New York, Bissinger's can be found at the Food Emporium, and is set to come to Bloomingdale's in the fall. Here's the website.
