Review: Fortunato No. 4 Chocolate

Mid-January is right down the middle of what my wife calls the chocolate season. The chocolate season runs from Halloween to Easter, with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day therein.

Bits of Fortunato No. 4 47% dark milk chocolate. Pardon my primitive hacking. (Click for larger.)

I like chocolate enough to have some opinions about it, but not very refined ones. For example, I’ve never liked hard candy labeled “chocolate” (example: the Dum Dums lollipops that were around for a while). And anything labeled “chocolatey” is immediately suspect, because that’s a word manufacturers are allowed to use when whatever’s in the product doesn’t meet minimum definitions of chocolate.

But mass-market from a name I recognize? Hershey? Nestle? Cadbury? I like these products and don’t have much religion about which is better. However, all mass-market chocolate is potentially problematic from a human trafficking perspective, so there’s that. And I’m kind of wondering if the intelligence that served me an ad for Fortunato No. 4 chocolate in my Instagram feed is smart enough to have used that little tidbit about me.

Fortunato No. 4 is a Peruvian-American family business that offers half-kilogram packages of 36% milk chocolate, 47% dark milk chocolate, or 68% dark chocolate for $19.95 each. They also sell roasted cacao nibs by the pound for the same price.

Now, north of $18/pound for chocolate sounds like a lot, but chocolate at any price is a luxury, is it not? Plus, if you’ll run the numbers you’ll probably find it’s not as outrageous as you think, particularly compared to premium brands.

I ordered the 36% and the 47% for my initial review. The scores on the blocks of chocolate are a bit crude and don’t allow for a lot of fine control, but you can break them into bars with 80-90% precision.

The 47% on top of the 36%. (Click for a closer look.)

I started with the 36%, and I’ll just say right off that perhaps my anticipation was unreasonably elevated. It’s definitely a good-tasting and high-quality product, but I was primed for complexities that never materialized. Perhaps this is to be expected from a palate so attuned and accustomed to comparatively inexpensive American chocolate.

I enjoyed the 47% considerably more, finding it richer, and with a longer-lasting, more robust flavor that persisted considerably longer after it had all melted. It was about as sweet as the 36%, but more intense.

(Do I sound like a rube more accustomed to reviewing hot sauces? Heh.)

I’ve since ordered the 68% and the cacao nibs, and will add to this review when I receive them. I’m looking forward to both. And, perhaps in the future we will order some additional Fortunato No. 4 specifically for cooking, and evaluate from that angle.

If you’re a chocolate lover and you’re curious, I’d say give it a go. I might start with the 47% though.

Review: Fortunato No. 4 Chocolate

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