(photo by Amano; amanochocolate.com)
Silver in Bean to Bar Best Dark Bar category of Academy of Chocolate Awards 2011
Ingredients: Cocoa beans, Pure cane sugar, Cocoa butter, Whole vanilla beans.
According to Amano:
“This is one of the world’s most unusual chocolates. It tastes like chocolate mixed with oranges with cinnamon and clove. To make this chocolate, we have not added any fruit or flavorings but have used very unusual cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic. These flavors are the true flavor of the special cocoa beans we used to make this very special chocolate. The flavor of cocoa beans changes depending on where they are from, their genetics, the skill of the farmer and these factors all go into the final flavor of the chocolate. Here, they all come together magically to create one of the world’s most unusual and most flavorful chocolates.” (source)
Information on the back of the bar:
“Where the mountains meet the sea on the “toe” of Italy, orchards of teh exotic bergamot orange, sway in rows to the peaceful ocean breezes. During our travels in the Dominican Republic, we discovered cocoa beans that naturally taste like bergamot, cinnamon, and clove. I developed special techniques specifically to preserve the delicate flavor of these beans. Unique in all the world, this chocolate will amaze, astound, and fill your senses with the passion of chocolate, bergamot and spice.” (source)
Amano Dos Rios reviews:
20°N & 20°S – http://www.20n20s.com/2010/03/amano-dos-rios-70.html
“I have never given any bar reviewed to date a perfect score of 100. This one has it for the aroma. ” (Candice Alström)
Candy Blog – http://www.candyblog.net/blog/item/amano_dos_rios_70
Chocablog – http://www.chocablog.com/reviews/amano-dos-rios/
“It?s certainly one of the more unusual chocolates I?ve tasted recently, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed.” (Dom Ramsey)
Choco Files – https://sites.google.com/site/chocolatereviewsite/reviews/Amano-DosRios-70.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1 (PDF file!)
Chocolate Ratings – http://chocolateratings.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/amano-dos-rios-guayas/
“A complex and very satisfying bar with a rustic gestalt.”
Critical Tastings – http://criticaltastings.blogspot.com/2010/10/amano-dos-rios-70-dark-chocolate.html
“Amano has really nailed the level of acidity on this one as well. Any more and the fruit would be overpowering; any less and it would be flat. I’ve had other chocolates with notably distinct flavors, but none have had the balance and complexity that the Dos Rios has.” (Eric Branchaud)
One Golden Ticket – http://onegoldenticket.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-amano-dos-rios.html
“Dos Rios tasted much as is smelled, with the immediate flavor of earl grey. Sweetness followed, with a range of orange flavors, including tangerine and clementine. The jasmine floral was also present in the taste, as was tannin. In addition, I tasted the dairy and spice from the aroma, as well as unexpected nutty flavor.” (Richard Vaughan)
Seventy Percent – http://www.seventypercent.com/2010/02/amano-dos-rios-3/
“(…)the chocolate tastes almost entirely like Early Grey tea infused with the floral essence of lavender. ” (Hans-Peter Rot)
“Aroma is so wildly different to anything previously seen in chocolate that it redefines the bounds of the possible.” (Alex Rast)
“The result is a bar of rare individuality that re-defines the idea of a demonstrative note in fine chocolate and shows just how complex and interesting certain beans, fermented in a certain way, can be.” (Stuart Robson)
Amano Artisan Chocolate on the Web: