Specialty chocolate in Vietnam

Hi bkk tea,
I have never seen this kind of chocolate. Your company made or sale it?

Quite the opposite; I've never seen or tried chocolate of this type either. 

They basically invented it in the last 10 to 15 years, I think.  They call it "bean to bar," not like other commercial chocolate is so different, cocoa / cacao beans are getting turned into chocolate bars, but in this case the selection, sourcing, and preparation is different.  And it's usually darker chocolates, but that doesn't have to be part of it.

It's like the craft-brewed or microbrew beer, or what specialty teas are to commercial teas, or the same now occurs with coffee (I just found out about a source for that too), etc.  These products really are different than the mass-produced versions, but someone would have to try them and judge for themselves if it makes any sense to pay more for much better versions.

That chocolate blog (not my blog, again) is a good overview of what it is, but it's reviews of the products, not so much focused on explaining the category.  From what I've seen online the bars go for $8 to $10, so not inexpensive, but not expensive for what they are too.  Maybe if they had to fly in from another country, as they would here, the vendor would need to charge more.  Eventually I'll try one but I'm sure the outcome is going to be that it's just really good chocolate, so how impressive that is would depend on the person, and how much they like chocolate.

bkk tea blog wrote:

I

marouchocolate.com

Has anyone tried it?  I guess it tastes like normal chocolate, but better?

I don't know what a "normal chocolate" is supposed to "taste like" .... for you !   ... such a sentence sounds really absurd to me. If you're talking about the average bar of sht that the biggest global industrial food brands sell under the name "chocolate" then we're not talking about the same thing. What I know is that Marou is made of at least 70% (and up to 80%) of pure vietnamese cocoa and sugar. Each of their products use cocoa beans coming from a distinctive region of Vietnam. We're talking craftmanshift here. That's all. And guess what ? As a chocolate "afficionado" I would say that the taste is awesome.

Talking about  chocolate. There is a top of the bill factory set up here 3 years ago, in Vungtau/Baria by a dutch older guy called Jan. They import containers full, what I understand, blocks of chocolate, cubic foot or cubic meter, Then meld it down and decorate and then it is shipped back to Belgium for a high class Belgium consortium. The containers are brought in by this consortium. This would be the chocolate we are talking about or is there even better.
Regards.

The chocolate I mentioned in those links is something else, for sure.  It's specialty, or artisian, bean-to-bar chocolate, which means they take fresher than average single-source cocoa / cacao beans and make chocolate from them using a very limited number of ingredients, most typically darker chocolates.

Sounds like 12xu could say more about what it is, just don't ask any questions using the expression "normal chocolate."  I wouldn't even venture as far as "conventional chocolate;" find some way to say chocolate you've never even heard of is normal and ask about that. 

From reading Lisabeth's blog it sounds like dark milk chocolate might be the easiest way for a decent-chocolate beginner to get started, just finding examples in SE Asia might be the trick.  They don't sell Marou chocolate in Bangkok now but one provider will begin to in December; I'll post more details about that when I can say more about where.

I've had several bars of Marou before, and well they do taste different. If i had to describe it, the feeling would be more "rustic", harder and more shiny than conventional chocolate, but i assume that's due to the high cacao content. All of Marou bars are dark chocolate starting from 72% i think, and each bar with a different color represents a different province which the cacao beans were grown in, the whole process of making chocolate is by hand, thats why the price is relatively high. They give poor families job producing those chocolate bars. Since Marou is quite bitter, i mostly use the brand for baking chocolate cakes, and the result is amazing. I don't think mainstream consumers would enjoy it though.