Izzy's - Umeshu Chocolate

Umeshu Chocolate - Chocolate Ice Cream made with Guittard Cocoa and Japanese Plum Wine

Today's flavor is a hand-packed flavor from the Saint-Paul-based Izzy's Ice Cream.  It is called Umeshu Chocolate.  It is a Guittard chocolate base blended with umeshu, or wine made with Japanese plums called ume.  They are called plums but are perhaps more closely related to apricots.  Choya is the brand of wine used here.  I got today's pint at Izzy's Saint Paul scoop shop before everything temporarily closed for the pandemic.  Sorry about the delay.  Sometimes I overload my freezer and a queue builds up before I get around to eating it.  Also, I wanted to try their regular chocolate first.  Let's check it out.

Removing the lid shows a much darker base than I was expecting, especially considering that umeshu is a lighter colored wine.  Digging in, this is a deeper and darker chocolate flavor than their regular chocolate pint.  I taste the wine right away too underneath the chocolate.  There is not too much wine -- this is not at all 'boozy', it does not have enough alcohol to soften the ice cream - but the wine flavor definitely complements the dark chocolate quite well.  It is a good blend.  This is a homogeneous pint with no mix-ins.

I quite liked this flavor.  It is a unique and interesting blend of wine and chocolate which I have not seen before.  The chocolate flavor is very strong -- you could almost call it dark chocolate and the wine accents and removes any bitterness that concentrated chocolate sometimes brings.  If you like dark chocolate and this type of a wine blend intrigues you then this is one to check out when the scoop shops re-open.