The minute I learned that Mazur’s calls their business a café and chocolate lab I was intrigued. After all, isn’t a chocolate laboratory full of creative potential and delicious possibilities?
Mazur’s website shows a beautiful, bustling coffee shop replete with happy staff and customers. There’s even a guitarist to make it more enticing. While I can’t beam myself there I was able to sample their chocolate.
All the bars came in beautifully designed artistic cardboard envelopes that re-closed easily. An inner gold foil wrapper was heavy enough to make my chocolate experience neat and contained. The bar’s design breaks easily into a multiplicity of triangular pieces with a central Mazur logo.
Before I share my sybaritic experience with these delights, I wanted to clarify something. Even though I spent a good portion of my life with art and artists, including a summer internship at the Guggenheim and studying art history in college for two years, I believe that when it comes to personal taste all the knowledge and beautiful adjectives in the world are irrelevant. I know that sounds extreme, especially from someone who loves words and knowledge. What I mean is that taste is idiosyncratic. You can study northern Renaissance art until you’re blue in the face, but if it doesn’t speak to you, you might appreciate it intellectually yet find it leaves you cold. Similarly, I can try to parse out the various flavors that emerge for me when I taste chocolate, and you might have a completely different experience. While my major focus is on the gustatory joy of chocolate, as well as its mighty phytochemical benefits for my physical and mental health, I also care about attractive packaging and user-friendly design, where bars break into manageable pieces. You may have other priorities. I simply love experiencing and sharing new chocolate creations with my readers. Your experiences will invariably be different from mine.
On to this beautiful, delicious flight of organic bars….
72% Madagascar is a creamy bar with lucious rounded flavors creating a balanced taste that quells any chocolate craving.
72% Ecuador has a fresh, fruity flavor and lovely, crisp temper.
72% Belize boasts a rich, creamy texture. It’s a great choice for someone embarking on a voyage to darker bars (over 70%) as it’s not going to overwhelm them with earthy or acidic notes that might turn them off to what they could erroneously consider “bitter chocolate.”
72% Dominican Republic is another silkily well-tempered love note with just a touch of acidity to punch up a fairly gentle flavor profile of light fruit and a hint of chestnut.
72% Ghana captivates with its depth of flavor. A bit earthy, but still elegant and full of fruity sweetness.
72% Guatemala has all the richness of the other bars with dark plummy flavors and a hint of terroir to make the experience more enticingly complex. If I had to pick a favorite, that was it.
I also sampled a 55% Dark Milk from Madagascar. This tasted like a classic milk chocolate with multiple layers of richness. A great choice for those who love milk chocolate and are curious to try its darker varieties.
Mazur Chocolates sources all their single origin beans ethically. In fact, one of their dreams is to lift cacao farmers in Belize out of poverty by building a factory on site. In this day and age, when we know better, we can do better. Buying ethically sourced chocolate from single origin small farms is one way to improve living conditions for people who currently don’t even have running water.
You can buy Mazur chocolate bars here: https://mazurchocolates.com
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