There are some chocolates so good, I never forget first tasting them. Bare Bones’ 68% Salted Dominican, the most unassuming of bars whose flavour notes keep playing long after eating, is still one of my favourites.
Pralus’ Barre Infernale (orange): a brutish brick, with a wonderful, dark, orangey, jammy middle. Neuhaus’s nougatine and fresh vanilla cream Caprice, eaten after a period of such dietary austerity that when I ate it the clouds parted and angels sang.
Zotter’s Plum Brandy, the first time I’d ever tasted a “filled” chocolate bar and what was meant to be one bite ended up being the entire bar, consumed with the decorum of a python, standing on the pavement behind London’s Oxford Street. Or Sur Alfajores, the 70% original, with a thick coating of chocolate around an orangey biscake and a dulce de leche filling, like the best wagon wheel ever.
