Meiji Chocolate Effect

A sampler of 4 different kinds of dark chocolate with heavy cacao content. Yikes!! Totally forgotten I have one last piece! And the expiry date was... 2007 August! Aaaaargh!!! I've eaten 3 of the less bitter ones in time, but forgot to write a review. (T_T) From memory, the 62% and 72% were like normal dark chocolate which I easily handled. The 86% was a little bit harsh in terms of bitterness. Not too delicious but nevertheless still eatable.

One thing I thought it's just for cuteness, was that the tiny chocolate bars were divided into a grid of 12 like scaled-down version of normal size ones. Until I ate the 99%, I didn't know smaller pieces is more practical. (Meaning, it can be difficult to eat the whole piece all at once, in terms of taste, of course.) There's even a warning saying it's extremely bitter.
Now, the 99% cacao...
Very fragrant with the aroma of cacao. Smells delicious and deluxe. No sign of fat separation even 8 months after expiry. I guess if 99% is cocoa, there's not much else to separate from.

Popped 1/4 into my mouth. It was weird. Smell = chocolate, taste = ???? I was confused. There's no sugar! Aaargh!! Weird weird weird!!! Doesn't feel like it's food. It melts slowly too. (Which means it stays in your mouth longer.) It's not sweet but not as bitter as I thought.

Then the 2nd 1/4. It started to feel wrong. Bitterness increased. The shock started to kick in. There's a gap between taste and mind. Am I eating plastic? Is this eatable? Should I even be doing this?

The 3rd 1/4 was quite unpleasant. My mind finally registered the experience. It felt like traditional Chinese herbal medicine. You know, the soup from boiling a bunch of dried roots and twigs and insects and what not. Totally disgusting! Yuck!! But then I noticed an unusually nice after taste. It's like liquorice. My mouth watered too. (Maybe a self-defense mechanism to wash away the weirdness?)

The last 1/4 was like, whatever, let's get it over with. Gotten used to it by now. But it's not any easier to stomach. And when it was done, came the nicest aftertaste. It's not sweet or sour or any taste of food, but a shadow, a reflection of very deluxe and heavenly ghost of liquorice. Kind of like, a faint sense of perfume a beautiful lady left behind long after she exited the room. I didn't drink any water during the tasting despite the unpleasant taste, but I didn't need any water afterwards either.

Well, I kind of wonder if this is like eating hot pepper. After you've been through hell, anything feels like heaven, right? Haha! Anyway, I don't think I'll go for the 99% ever ever ever again. But I'm not saying it's not good, it's just too strong for me.