A recent chocolate purchase from Bovetti Artisan Chocolatier of France brought together the popular combination of salt and sweet in their Caramel and Fleur de Sel bar. What stood out to me first was the packaging. While other companies go for richness and gloss in their look, this company goes back to basics.
Their packaging is similar to kraft cardboard with an envelope look complete with postmarks. It has a clear window on the front teasing you with the chocolate waiting inside. The melted caramel bits resting on the naked chocolate caught my eye. It was very raw looking and honest. No foil wrapping, no where to hide.
The milk chocolate bar is made very thin to get the maximum amount of ‘underside’ for the caramel and salt to rest. The salt was not as visible on the bar I had and in some bites there was none and in others it clearly came through in the taste. I wondered if this was because the salt is tossed randomly on the bar by hand and not machine?
The sweet caramel was just enough flavour, not too sweet. It gave the bar a chewy texture in my mouth and the larger caramel bits added a quick crunch now and again. The milk chocolate was a definite backdrop to the strong play of caramel and salt and didn’t stand out as extraordinary chocolate. The additional ingredients were what raised the level of the bar.
When I purchased the bar at the retailer, they had only five different flavours to choose from. I was surprised to learn that Bovetti has over 100 bar flavours including Apricot, Anise, Cranberries, Lemon, Fennel, Cocoa Bean, Dry Fruits, Ginger, Blue Mint, Honey, Hazelnut, Crystallized Orange, Poppy, Sichuan Pepper, Pistachio, Sesame and Lavender. All of these have their ingredients added to the underside of the bar so it’s hard to know how to serve it. Maybe we are not meant to share it and we are to keep these yummy chocolates to ourselves. We wouldn’t want to create a faux pas now would we.
The Bovetti website is naturally in French and they do have an English language selector however the translation doesn’t appear to be working. I wish I could have learned more from their website but photos of their chocolate would have to suffice and that’s not such a bad thing.
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