Pacari Tasting on March 28th

Recently we picked Pacari's 72% Los Rios as our bar of the week. This Saturday we are giving you the chance to taste some of their other great chocolate products. We'll be featuring their chocolate-covered nibs, golden berries, and dried bananas, and we'll also have on hand some samples of their 60% Esmeraldas bar.

All of Pacari's products are made with single-origin Arriba Nacional cacao grown in the rainforests of Ecuador. The chocolate is handcrafted in small batches and is certified organic and kosher parve.

The tasting will start at 1:00 pm and will last until we run out of chocolate, so come early!

Easter is on its way!

It's bunnies and eggs galore at Chocolopolis with new items by Michel Cluizel. From long-eared milk chocolate rabbits for the kids to delicious gianduja nests with pate de fruits eggs for adults, we've got all of your favorite Easter treats covered. We're even getting into the action ourselves by handcrafting hollow chocolate eggs in store from dark, milk, and white chocolate and filling them with Cluizel's delicious ganache eggs.

For our clientel observing Passover, we just introduced a line of matzoh clusters made from 55% chocolate and topped with either sea salt or chili salt. The clusters come packaged in tubes of six, and we can also make up a platter of 18 clusters for Seder dinners.


Also worth a mention are the two new Norman Love confections residing in our case - Florida Orange and Java Fudge. You asked for coffee truffles and boy does the flavor of this confection deliver. Skip the $4 latte and satisfy your sweet tooth with a stop in today.

New - Norman Love Confections

All the way from Ft. Myers, Florida, Norman Love's chocolates are now available in our truffle case. We are starting out with eight flavors of his beautifully decorated confections - Raspberry, Cookies 'n' Cream, Passion Fruit, Cinnamon Roll, Eclair, Pistachio Cherry, Key Lime, and Vanilla Cupcake. Each has either a dark, milk, or white chocolate shell and a creamy ganache that is flavored without artificial ingredients.

Like many chocolatiers, Norman Love started out in the restaurant industry before opening Norman Love Confections with his wife, Mary, in 2001. He honed his skills working as an Executive Pastry Chef for the Ritz-Carlton hotels in Naples and St. Louis, and the Beverly Hills Hotel in California. He has been named one of the top chocolatiers in the nation, first by USA Today in 2002 and again by Consumer Reports in 2005, and his skilled airbrush and painting techniques that he uses to color his masterpieces have inspired numerous chocolatiers to do the same.

Stop by today and discover "Love at first bite".

Bar of the Week: Byrne & Carlson Mendiant Bar

Region: Inclusions

Cocoa Content: 55%

Ellen Byrne and Christopher Carlson are the husband and wife duo behind this Portsmouth, New Hampshire chocolate company. Each bar they produce is crafted from the finest French, Belgium and Venezuelan chocolate available and decorated by hand. This week's bar takes its name from a traditional French confection that is typically decorated with raisins, hazelnuts, almonds, and figs, with each item representing the color of a monastic robe. Byrne & Carlson's mendiant bar has a Valrhona semi-sweet chocolate base that is the perfect complement to its jewel-like adornments of candied orange peel, almonds, candied mint leaves, tart cherries, and candied violets. With each bite a new flavor flourishes, and this bar is certain to be a winner with our Saturday tasting crowd.

Fun Fact: Ellen and Christopher have been working together for almost 20 years and have been married for 11. They started Byrne & Carlson Confections in 1999 and have purposely kept the business small so that they can continue to make each product themselves, ensuring that every bar produced will impress the consumer with its appearance and taste.

Bar of the Week: Michel Cluizel Les Criolles

In addition to the 150+ bars that Chocolopolis carries, we also sell a wide variety of books and confections. This week we're taking a break from sampling bars to feature these beautiful cacao pods designed by French chocolate maker, Michel Cluizel. Each pod is handcrafted from Cluizel's dark chocolate and colored with cocoa butter. One bite into a pod reveals a rich dark chocolate ganache made with cacao from "Los Ancones", a plantation on the island of Santo Domingo where an aromatic variety of trinitario is cultivated. Cacao has been grown here in the same method since 1903, without the use of fertilizers or pesticides. Cluizel describes the finished chocolate as having notes of liquorice wood, red berries, and green olives, with a lingering flavor of currants and apricots. These pods make a tasty gift or after dinner treat, but they won't be around forever so stop in for some today.

Pacari Chocolate

Region: Ecuador
Bean Type: Nacional
Cocoa Content: 72%

This week's featured bar is from Pacari Chocolate- a line new to Chocolopolis. Pacari Chocolate, a company based in Quito, Ecuador, produces premium fair trade, organic chocolate from Ecuadorian beans. Their product line includes chocolate bars as well as chocolate covered fruits, nuts, and cacao nibs. Uniquely, two of their bars are "Raw," meaning they are made from unroasted beans that are processed at low temperatures. Pacari claims that such a process "maintains the anitoxidants and complex flavor of the cacao."

Pacari is one of a very few bean-to-bar chocolate makers who process their chocolate entirely in the country of origin. The company's founders, Carla Borboto and Santiago Peralta, are passionate not only about using organic ingredients, but also improving the communities in which the beans are grown. They founded the "Organic Agriculture Educational Project" which helps educate both local farmers and school children.

Our bar of the week is a 72% dark chocolate bar from the Los Rios region of Ecuador. The Los Rios bar has a wonderfully complex flavor profile: we tasted hints of smoke, green plant, olive, and rum. It's bold, it's unique, it's earthy. And with descriptions like that, it should feel right at home here in Seattle!

Fun Fact: The word Pacari means "nature" in Quechua, an indigenous language of Ecuador.

Bar of the Week - Michel Cluizel Lait aux Noisettes

Region: Inclusion
Cocoa Content: 45%

Michel Cluizel began his chocolate career in 1948 as an apprentice in his parent's chocolate shop in Normandy, France. 60 years later his company employs over 200 people, including his four children, and produces some of the finest chocolate in the world. His passion for making chocolate is evident in his careful production methods and his dedication on every bar to use only the purest of ingredients. His 72% blend has quite a following on our premium drinking chocolate menu, and two of his single-origin bars are featured this month in our 5 for $5 Thursday tastings. This Saturday we are once again catering to the milk chocolate lovers by sampling out Monsieur Cluizel's 45% milk chocolate which has been blended with roasted and ground Italian hazelnuts. For those who do dark only, a cup of our Cluizel hot chocolate is a great excuse to get out of the chilly weather and rain showers predicted for this weekend.

Fun Fact: Michel Cluizel was among the first to make chocolate using beans from a single plantation.