Chocolate Monggo Dark 69%: Indonesia

Up till now, every single Monggo bar I’d ever tried consisted of Chocolate Monggo’s 58% base, and I won’t lie to be polite. I was getting pretty f–king sick of it! And then this bar appeared. An extra fine dark, at 69%. Monggo uses Indonesian imagery to draw the 6 and 9 on the front wrapper.

Why did Monggo use 69%? Perverts out there will suggest 69 was used because of its name as a sexual position. Surf adult web sites, sickoes, not the Chocolate Republic! Perhaps the founders were enamored with the musical changes taking place in 1969, the year of the Woodstock music festival in upstate New York. Maybe they wanted to make this bar 71%, but were short the extra 2% cacao at the time.

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Tesco Organic Ecuadorean 85% Plain Chocolate: UK

British retail powerhouse, Tesco, steps up to the plate again, offering the Chocolate Republic another organic fairtrade bar made from Ecuadorean arriba beans with their characteristically sweetly spiced taste.

Back when I was a teenager, it would’ve been easy to discount in-house store brands as inferior to the specialists. How could a Tesco compete in the chocolate market against the big boys like Lindt or Green & Black’s? Today, Tesco can. In a 2010 blind taste test of 21 organic and fairtrade chocolate products in the UK, Tesco scored the #1 slot, ahead of Green & Black’s.

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Chocolate Monggo Orange Peel: Indonesia

You win some, you lose some. Is that the unofficial slogan of Chocolate Monggo, a chocolate operation based out of Yogyakarta on the island of Java in Indonesia?

Chocolate Monggo is, pretty much, playing on note over and over again, but with a slightly different drum track. In one of their 58% bars, they’ll add caramel; in another ginger; and in this one, orange peel. There’s nothing wrong with this simple approach. A small chocolate operation can’t be spinning out six different types of chocolate complete with different fillings without costs escalating out of control.

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Chocolate Monggo Ginger: Indonesia

Chocolate Monggo Orange Peel: Indonesia

Chocolate Monggo is a true Indonesian success story. In 2006, the Yogyakarta-based company was producing just 200 kg of chocolate a month. Six years on, they’re doing 5 tons a month and big chains like Carrefour and Circle K are stocking the product. It’s a good product — for Indonesia. One of the co-founders claims that there is demand for the product in Europe, the U.S., Canada, New Zealand. I find that very difficult to believe. In any of those aforementioned areas, consumers can get much better quality chocolate and at lower prices.

A Chocolate Monggo bar is what you eat when you’re in Indonesia, and what I’ve discovered working my way through their range is that there’s a very big difference in quality depending upon what ingredients Monggo decides to pair with their decidedly average trademark 58% blend and whether the bar is a thin (80g) or a thick block (100g) or a snack side (40g).

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Chocolate Monggo Raisin & Cashew Nuts: Indonesia

Monggo is a Javanese word that translates to “Please, go ahead.” I’ve been going ahead with this brand for 2 1/2 years now. Chocolate Monggo didn’t make a great first or second or third impression on me. The bars were all the rage among the tourist community in Yogyakarta (Java, Indonesia) when I first tried them in August 2009. Alongside my girlfriend, I re-tried a few in Bali 8 months later, still no more impressed. With the Chocolate Republic firmly underway, I asked my girlfriend-turned-wife to bring back a collection of Chocolate Monggo bars to give the brand range a fair assessment.

In 2009, the per capita consumption of chocolate in Indonesia was just a third of a kilogram. In Switzerland, the consumption per capita is over 10 kg. Monggo sources their cacao from Javanese, Sumatran, and Celebes plantations. As I researched the company, I could find nothing to suggest they’re a bean-to-bar manufacturer, and it would probably be overkill if they were. Chocolate Monggo likely is better than anything else out there in the Indonesian marketplace at present. Undeveloped Indonesian palates — and hell, foreign palates, too — wouldn’t know the difference if Monggo upped the quality by an order of magnitude. To Joe Tourist, Monggo bars are just a mementoes with Indonesian motifs on the wrapper to take back home and gift as souvenirs.

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Chocolate Monggo Praline: Indonesia

My wife just returned from Bali, Indonesia bearing, at my request, a half dozen Indonesian-made chocolate bars.

Voicing this request, it is not as if my wife had scores of Indonesian firms she could’ve purchased chocolate from. Indonesia produces about 14% of the world’s cacao, but there aren’t any companies of note that are turning this cacao into products that meet the standards of the Western chocolate palate. This is where the Yogyakarta based company, Chocolate Monggo, found its niche.

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Chocolate Monggo Macadamia: Indonesia

My wife recently had to spend 5 nights in Bali (Indonesia) on a business trip. She returned bearing Indonesian sauces, Indonesian spice pastes, Indonesian coffees, and, of course, Indonesian chocolates.

Indonesia is currently the world’s third largest producer of cacao   I just read a 2011 article on the Embassy of Indonesia in Italy’s website about how Indonesia is poised to become the world’s largest cocoa producer. Like many things said in Indonesia, there are no facts to back up the statement. “Having the ability to produce cocoa beans in large quantities,” the article stated, “Indonesia is ready to set aside Ivory Coast as the world’s largest producer and exporter.” As further ‘proof,’ the West Sulawesi governor remains optimistic Indonesia will become the world’s largest cocoa producer and exporter. These statements, pulled out of individual asses, are sufficient, by Indonesian standards, to state, as the article’s title, that Indonesia is to become the world’s largest cocoa producer. Remember Jack Dawson, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Titanic? He said he was “King of the World.” His reign lasted only a few days. Jack wound up on the bottom of the freezing Atlantic Ocean.

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Willie's Indonesian 69: UK

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Butlers Butterscotch: Ireland

Irish “luxury” chocolate manufacturer Butlers fails to impress on its second bar in the Chocolate Republic’s tasting sample.   The first bar, the Mixed Berry, pleasantly distracted me because of its five different berries, giving me more than my daily dosage of Vitamin C. The average white with the superb berry mixture earned that bar high marks.

When it comes to Butterscotch, we’re back on familiar turf. Everyone nowadays offers a Butterscotch crisp kind of bar. For Butlers to show that they’re true purveyors of happiness in the luxury segment, they’re going to have to offer some stellar milk chocolate or spellbinding butterscotch.

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Butlers Hazelnut: Ireland

Things only get worse for Butlers. They started out high in the sky with the Mixed Berry.  Butterscotch was only slightly above average. Now we come to a mainstream combination, a Hazelnut.

Everyone is making a hazelnut nowadays. If you’re going to compete head on with a mainstream combination and bill yourself as a luxury chocolate maker, then the amount and/or roasting process of your hazelnuts had better be superior to the competition. Your chocolate should be better crafted. Hazelnut milk chocolate bars are a very, very crowded segment. Give me a reason to remember you!

Butlers doesn’t. Its milk chocolate is average at best, too much on the sweet side, and though its roasted hazelnut content is listed at 20%. I wasn’t choking on the number of hazelnuts going down my throat. One word, mates. A disappointment.

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