DB Infusion Chocolates is a Marx Foods customer who were gracious enough to send us a 27-piece box of their chocolates to try. It came in on Tuesday morning and since the holiday season has us all working so hard I invited the entire team to take a break and taste some chocolates. We cut up each truffle into quarters and went to town. We all thought that the chocolate truffles were excellent!
I asked Matthew to write up a review since he is unquestionably the most authoritative chocolate truffle taster in the office. Here are his thoughts:
Before even discussing their chocolates’ flavor, one must first cover the packaging and presentation. They are simply too impressive to be ignored.
The Box
The chocolates arrived in a long embossed chocolate-brown gift box with gold trim. It screamed luxury so effectively that I’m having a hard time using the word “box” instead of “case” (as in display case) and was an elegant showpiece for the jewel-like bonbons inside.
The box was sealed with a magnetic clasp that unobtrusively held it closed while offering little resistance to impulses to have “just one more piece.” Inside, a cardboard matrix separated each piece from its compatriots, preventing damage to their glossy finish.
The Presentation
The chocolate work on display in a DB Infusion showcase is impressive. Most of the chocolates we received were molded rather than dipped or enrobed, giving them a sleek elegance and clean lines. Of these, almost all were brushed with tinted cocoa butter, adding shine and blends of vibrant colors well paired with the fillings’ themes.
A few pieces were slightly more rustic (dipped or enrobed), each garnished delicately with a few bits of sea salt, pistachio, candied zest or a crystallized flower petal. Like the molded chocolates, these were well tempered & executed cleanly with thin shells.
The Flavor
DB Infusion’s flavors are almost universally about pushing boundaries. If you order one of the 27-piece boxes, you’ll likely find a few expected favorites, like a salted caramel (with cashews), a raspberry-dark chocolate ganache (with Framboise), and possibly an espresso ganache. That said, the majority of the pieces are more groundbreaking pairings like mango-passion fruit caramel, lemongrass-kaffir lime ganache, and bleu cheese ganache.
Fine chocolates should showcase intense flavors, with each offering a distinct experience from the last. In this respect DB Infusion certainly delivers.
While some flavors were more subtle (the bleu cheese ganache is delightful – milk chocolate followed by a mild-yet-complex bleu cheese-chocolate finish) most were very powerful, demanding the tasters’ full attention even when we’d quartered the pieces to share. The fold-out flavor guide was useful in determining which piece to try next, but nobody needed it to describe what they’d eaten after tasting.
To sum up, the experience of tasting from a box of DB Infusion Chocolates is more akin to a tasting menu at a “molecular gastronomy” restaurant than a visit to a classical French fine dining establishment. If you’re looking to have your expectations challenged and your taste buds thrown to the four corners of the earth in 27 bites, you’ve discovered the right chocolate company.