Cacao Reserve
Jul. 29th, 2007 08:02 pmHershey'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.
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.
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