Bean to Bar chocolate maker Alan McClure has been formulating luscious chocolate in Columbia Missouri for over ten years, and is currently finishing up a master’s degree to become a food scientist and raise the already high (ahem, chocolate) bar on his spectacular confection.
This has also raised the price of his already high-end chocolate, but it’s worth it, and so are you! Because of his busy calendar, Patric Chocolate is now on a special bar-release schedule, with specific ordering windows, and if you snooze, you lose. Well…we’re winners, and we’re happy to say that Fair Shares has one of the best (if not THE best) selections of Patric Chocolates in the city.
Available now, and at considerably less than most retail outlets offer, at $8.50 per bar (we’ve seen $12 plus shipping, gulp), we have an impressive array:
* Items marked with an asterisk are limited availability.
75% Madagascar: 2013 Good Food Award Winner I first released this bar in 2008, and it immediately became a customer favorite, and later a Good Food Award Winner. It was also once called the espresso of Madagascar chocolates, and I definitely take that as a compliment. If you like intense, complex dark chocolate, and a smooth melt, this is the bar for you.
Mint CRUNCH: 2014 Good Food Award Winner The combination of chocolate and mint is classic. My goal was to work on balancing these two flavors until I obtained a perfect blend of chocolaty, crunchy, cookie-like notes and a cool mint aroma. Our 2014 Good Food Award for this bar must mean that someone shared that appreciation.
Mocha OMG: 2014 Good Food Award Winner Everyone always says that coffee and chocolate go great together, but it wasn’t until I worked at blending them that I realized how difficult it can be to create a coffee-chocolate greater than the sum of its parts. It took me many months of different blends of cocoa beans and coffee beans, but when it finally came together it made me grin like a caffeinated fool.
58% Dark Milk: Sure, everyone loves the cute cow on the front of the package, but the real treat is inside. This bar contains a blend of three different cacao origins, creamy whole milk, and just a hint of sea salt, all fused together into a deeply satisfying cacao-forward, caramel-hinted, and truly well-balanced milk chocolate.
Red Coconut Curry: This 2015 Good Food Award winner has crunchy, salty-sweet, toasted coconut chips topping an aromatic dark chocolate blended with chiles, ginger sugar, lime and lemongrass essential oils. There simply isn’t another bar like it.
Double-Vanilla Orange Sherbet: Inspired by my childhood flavor memories of orange creamsicles on hot summer days, I created this grown-up version with Tahitian and Bourbon vanilla beans, whole milk, a bright and citrusy cacao blend, and blood orange essential oil. The result is a chocolate that makes me smile like I’m a kid again.
67% Madagascar: A two-time Good Food Award winner, including for 2015, this bar is our best-selling single-origin dark chocolate. It’s filled with bright citrus and berry flavors, and counterbalanced by complex almond-like roasted flavors and a hint of sweetness. It is a shining example of what single-bean chocolate can be.
PBJ OMG: A 2015 Good Food Award Winner. When I released this bar almost five years ago there was nothing like it on the market. Like all of my chocolate, this is made from bean-to-bar, but it also contains organic dark-roasted peanut butter ground right in. Combined with bright berry-jam-like Madagascar cacao, this bar tastes even better that its namesake.
*Piura Dark Milk: Our 67% Piura dark chocolate won us two medals in the 2013 International Chocolate Awards. So in 2014 I decided to turn these unique Peruvian beans into a dark milk chocolate too. You’ll taste notes of sun-dried wine grapes, ruby red grapefruit, and toasted almonds blended with clear hints of toffee.
Nutty Nib CRUNCH: Sometimes you have to keep it simple: dry-roasted peanuts, cocoa nibs, and a sprinkling of sea salt on a base of dark milk. It is moreish to the highest degree.
In-NIB-itable: This two-time Good Food Award winner is the first inclusion bar that I ever created. When it went on the market in 2009, it became one of the very first single-origin nib bars, and to this day it remains one of the most delicious. While there are now many nib bars, there has only ever been one In-NIB-itable.
Holy Mole!: Tongue-tickling cinnamon and chiles are what you get with this beautiful chocolate, and a hint of vanilla, smoked paprika and sea salt too. A truly unique bar.
Salty Signature Seventy: On a foundation of our award-winning Signature 70% blend, we have sprinkled crunchy crystals of hand-harvested sea salt. The result inspires the taste buds!
*Raspberry Pear Balsamic: This ambitious, and very well-balanced combination of raspberry, balsamic vinegar and pear essence was lovely. The chocolate was very smooth — almost creamy, with slightly tangy fruit and raspberry flavor at the beginning; and the subtle pear flavor kicked in as part of the finish.