Ted goes to the dark side

... and the light side too, all at the same time. How is that possible Ted?  well ... the Princesses of Popcorn and their Ladies in Waiting decided it was time for another taste outing, and this time they fancied chocolate.  The pre-tasting instructions (to me) were clear. “As well as all the fancy shmancy dark stuff you want us to taste Ted we want some of the stuff we really like to eat, we want some of the white stuff as well”. So much for the high tastes of royalty then eh ... sigh ... ok ...

I did a bit of shop lifting and lined up five readily available dark and serious chocolate bars for the first round: Green & Blacks (G&Bs) 70%, Sao Tome 71%, Montezumas 73%, Divine 85%, and Lindt 99%. The "Milky Bar Kid" gang were asked to rate them based on categories that proper chocolate tasters use:  look, smell, snap, texture, and taste.  The range of categories is supposedly designed to stimulate as many of your senses as possible in the experience. I enlisted the help of an accountant friend who shall remain nameless (Lizzie) to do the score-sheet analysis and collate the results of the dark side preferences.

Look - Lindt was a narrow winner.  Smell - Montezuma romped home well ahead of the pack. Snap – Lindt again saw off the competition.  Texture – G&Bs and Montezumas first equal, and they repeated that performance in Taste. No such luck for Lindt in the taste category where someone else who shall remain nameless (Mandy) gave it a score of minus 5 out of a possible 5 with the comment “tastes like bitumen”. After a bit of data normalisation the overall placings were … 1^st Montezumas, Divine was just pipped at the post and pushed back to 3^rd place by G&Bs who took out 2^nd, Sao Tome limped home in 4^th and Lindt was a long way back in 5^th place, after a promising start. The accompanying Tawny Ports (10 and 20 years old) both averaged 4 out of 5 for match (if indeed anything could match and compliment bitumen as a foodstuff??).

The line-up of the white chocolate goodies, with their accompanying Muscat desert wines, were much more popular judging by the far nicer comments, and the left over ratios at the end of the evening. The “stuff we really like to eat” like Willie’s Cacao El Blanco and G&Bs Madagascan vanilla bars, Hotel Chocolat white bunnies, Godiva crème brulee truffles, and Confetteria Raffaello (the light side of Ferrero Rocher), all pretty much disappeared in a waft of cocoa butter.

For some totally unfathomable reason there was a huge amount of that snappy and more than good looking Lindt 99% leftover. 

The thing about photography

… is that I am really really bad at it.  I suck big time, but you saw that already right. The Doll has magnificent photography genes all over her DNA (again I am stating the bleeding obvious aren't I). I do have photography genes in my DNA, the only problem is that they are badly recessive ones, and I know why this is … my Mother !!!  If I had lost my memory at some stage earlier in my life and had to rely on her family snapshots to bring it all back I would be convinced that a) I had two and a half siblings, b) my mother was nine feet tall judging by the size of her shadow on us, and c) we lived in a garage … without a door, but we did have a car.

Well you can’t have it all they say … but what I do have is an institutional wine memory and a modest  ability to do wine reviews.  The Doll does not … 

Whenever I want to buy wine accompanied by entertaining and informative conversation I head down to see Mr Albion. His store is in a little cobbled street, and it's what I imagine a wine shop in a Harry Potter movie might look like. Kinda dusty with wine everywhere, but there is logic in the seemingly unordered groaning shelves and piles on the floor. Albion buys wine he likes and he generously allows us to buy what he likes as well.

He gave me this wine to try and give him some feedback.  So … I enlisted the Doll’s help.  Here is her review ... “light coloured, with a tiny hint of sunshine coming in the window, clear and sort of sparkly.  The label would benefit from another colour to give it depth and make it easier to photograph” … and? ... “and what?” … “oh yeah, tastes nice, have I had this before?” … I did warn you didn’t I … no wine review genes at all!

Here’s what this little fun Muscat from the south of France is really like … light golden in colour, sweet Muscat perfume on the nose, juicy, grapey and moreish on the palate, low acidity, nice light floral mouthful.  The lower alcohol level makes it perfect for summer lunch time drinking as an aperitif or matched with the fresh flavours of Vietnamese food.