Cacao Reserve

[elfs]

Hershey's is attempting to nudge its nose into the boutique chocolate market with their new Cacao Reserve [warning: big ugly flash-only interface page]. Being, as I am, always on the lookout for good stuff at bargain prices, I decided to give it a try since the local grocer was putting it up on sale and it was cheaper than the brand with the lions and monkeys on its covers.

This stuff is simply awful. The flavor is a step up from Hershey's usual fare, but the texture is hideous. It's like eating clay. It's almost as if Hershey's formulists left the couverture intact, which gives chocolate an excessively fatty texture. Chocolateirs process out some of the cocoa butter to give chocolate that crisp fragility. I happen to like both; I've bought both Schaffen Berger eating chocolate and their couveture and the distinction between the two is fascinating. But the Hershey's just tastes wrong; it feels as if the couverture was allowed to soften for a while, sour, and then recongeal.

I don't think Hershey's could make a decent chocolate if their company's future was on the line. Lucky for them they don't have to make a good chocolate: they have enough peripheral products that their chocolate only has to be so-so, and worth the ocassional nostalgia bite. Special Dark is actually better than Cacao Reserve. Hershey's Special Dark was for many of us the gateway drug to chocolate couverture like Bonnat, Dagoba and Scharffen Berger, but there's no reason to go back now, and there's definitely no reason to pay more for less pleasure. It will take more than a pricey wrapper and mistaking the Americal palette for fatty foods as an ideal to make me want to go back.

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

I've enjoyed the Lindt Excellence 85% bittersweet chocolate bars; I used to have a tough time finding it, but now it's carried at World Market, Fry's, and, most recently, Vons... I also recently found their dark mint chocolate, which is a more serious threat to my waistline, but so far I've only seen it at Fry's, which I don't go to very often.

[lovingboth]

I was wondering about Lindt, because I've never heard of the other (quality) brands mentioned...

[panthyrr.livejournal.com]

The 99% is actually quite good too, though sort of an acquired taste. Excellent for eating with good coffees.

[phoenix14159.livejournal.com]

I got a sample of the Cacao Reserve at a grocery store a while back. It was incredibly underwhelming. I think their regular Hershey bar is better -- and that's saying a lot, none of it good.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

they reformulated Special Dark a number of years ago and it's never been teh same since

[woggie.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Sweetie noticed quite some time ago that specialty coffee has an awful bitterness to it. The bitter taste is in all the Special Blend coffee she's ever tasted. It doesn't matter where the coffee is from.

I personally think coffee makers have figured out the means of getting people to pay more for bitter coffee because it's marked as "better". I suspect Hershey is trying to apply the same notion to chocolate, and I'll bet you anything people are buying it.

People are so stupid sometimes.