The Luxurious Chocolate Landscape of LetterPress Chocolate

This article was first published in 2017 and updated in August 2021.

The LetterPress Chocolate Small Batch, Bean to Bar chocolate bar, 70% Tanzania Kokoa Kamili, is worth writing home about. This fruity, tart, and exciting bar left Time Cupsoul wishing for more. This is some chocolate that’s worth tasting!

22159489_170082730212860_7577570242956623872_n — “Approximately a ten hour drive from Tanzania’s main city of Dar es Salaam, Kokoa Kamili is based in the village of Mbingu (Kiswahili for Heaven) in the Kilombero Valley area of the Morogoro region bordering the Udzungwa Mountain National Park. Mbingu is fairly rural with no access to electricity or tarred roads for about sixty kilometers.”

LetterPress Chocolate Packaging

First, let’s talk logo. Each LetterPress bar stands out with a beautiful textured stamp at the top of the packaging. The artwork showcases a prop airplane soaring over a mountain-dotted landscape and open cocoa pods in the foreground. “LetterPress Chocolate” is etched into a banner and surrounded by swirls and furls fit for royalty.

The top stamp portion of LetterPress’ packaging truly has the vibe of a great vintage airline travel ad coupled with a vintage chocolate poster.

buy letterpress chocolate online, here

Every LetterPress bar also has the chocolate origin country’s coat of arms, unique displays of patriotism not often seen (if ever) on chocolate. Tanzania’s coat of arms has “Uhuru Na Umoja” written underneath, in Swahili translating to “Freedom and Unity.”

gray and red airplane flying under blue sky — Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

LetterPress Chocolate Ingredients

The bar has two ingredients: certified organic cacao beans and certified organic unrefined cane sugar. The packaging states:

“We hand-sort, roast, crack, winnow, grind at least 48 hours, age for at least a month, then temper, mold and wrap all of our bars in-house to bring out the purest expression of each bean we source.”

The packaging also provided the tasting notes: “green banana, and peppery mocha.” Hmm. Upon biting into the bar, Time Cupsoul immediately tasted a tart+ fruity essence. The deep aroma of the bar overtook all of the senses, and soon strong flavors began enveloping the mouth and bursting in:

Red Berry: Cherry
Chocolate: Deep, Dark Chocolate
Citrus: Lemon
Spicy: Cloves, Pepper

Are you transported yet? This bar does truly have a spicy side, which is delicious, and is very aromatic. It does not have the sweetness that many recent chocolate bar tastings have mimicked. There’s no notes of “chocolate: melted chocolate ice cream” or “sugar: molasses” on the taste buds here, this bar is simply deep, dark chocolate that sings tart and ends spicy.

buy the letterpress chocolate 70% Dark CHocolate tanzania bar today

Was this a time cupsoul?

light road vehicles dawn — Photo by Pepe Caspers on Pexels.com

Time Cupsoul has yet to travel to Tanzania, but this bar provided its own sort of gorgeous adventure. The experience that this bar provided is best summed up by the vintage LetterPress “stamp” with the prop plane on the front of their packaging — a window into a wild, romantic and luxurious world — all of the key seductive elements of chocolate itself.

Enjoy 🙂

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