Spain's hottest chocolate

Homegrown and homemade are best yes. There are though, a few imports I have a weakness for. Spain's Blanxart artisan chocolate in any form is one of them.

Since I first wrote about Blanxart, in The Age Epicure I became a fan, so when Raw Materials offered to send me Blanxart's drinking chocolate to try I said yes please!

This winter, hot chocolate made at home has been an occasional after school warming drink. I've tried a few different brands of drinking chocolate and most of them are incredibly sweet. The quality that stands out about Blanxart drinking chocolate is the beautiful velvet chocolatey-ness shines through because it is not smothered by sugar. The bitterness of the cocoa is balanced with a well considered amount of sugar but not overpowered.

If you're interested in a bit of background to the Blanxart story, they have been around since 1954 and hail from the Les Corts region in Barcelona. The company was started by a talented master chocolatier and four courageous partners. I say courageous because I really admire people who take a risk and start 'something from nothing' so to speak and see where it takes them, the master chocolatier left the security of working for other people in their cake and chocolate businesses to follow his own vision and has succeeded in creating a highly regarded brand.

In addition to their drinking chocolate, Blanxart create blocks of exquisite dark chocolate 60%, 72%, 80% and 82% cocoa content and also a milk chocolate 48%. The exquisiteness all begins with the careful selection of cocoa beans from Ecuador, Brazil and Africa, the beans are then roasted by Blanxart to ensure the perfectly balanced blend, aroma and texture is achieved.

Hot chocolate drinking days are numbered though as the sun is shining here today. I'll pretend Spring is closer than it is.      

If you live in Australia you can find Blanxart drinking chocolate in these stores:
Oasis Bakery, Murrumbeena Victoria; Alps and Amici, East Launceston Tasmania; Farmer Jack's Subiaco, Subiaco Western Australia; and Delicado, McMahons Point New South Wales.        

**Disclaimer - Thanks to Raw Materials for sending me Blanxart drinking chocolate. As with all samples that have been coming my way since I started food writing 12 years ago, some are worth writing about and sharing with readers others are not. I decided to share Blanxart here with you because I thought you'd like it! I was not paid to write this post.