Bouvery CV Chocolate Vodka

Back in 2013, I participated in a focus group for a new chocolate liqueur drink. That product was launched as Baileys Chocolat Luxe later that year, and it was fair to say I wasn’t a fan of it from the start. Ostensibly a more chocolatey Bailey’s made with ‘Belgian chocolate’, it turned out not to be especially chocolatey and had an unappetising curdled appearance when poured.

I personally found Thorntons offering preferable to the the Baileys, but I’ve always felt it must be possible to do it better. It’s not just a matter of choosing better quality ingredients – although that certainly goes a long way. The difficult part is getting chocolate to stay in suspension in a drink with a luxurious and smooth texture.

But with Bouvery CV, a vodka based chocolate drink, it seems someone might have finally cracked it.

Danny Bouvery, a Londoner now living in New York, has been working on the problem for nearly 20 years. From simple experiments at home, through many years of methodical testing and trials, he developed his idea from a home made drink that took several days to produce into a best-in-class product.

Working with Westford Hills distillers in Connecticut, Bouvery has managed to produce a chocolate liqueur drink that is quite unlike anything else on the market. It’s rich, thick, luxuriously chocolatey and shockingly easy to drink. Tasting a sip feels like being enveloped in a blanket of chocolate with a warming vodka kick. The texture is smooth and thick to the point that it almost feels like the chocolate is melting in the mouth and the vodka kick hits a perfect note.

The bottle I was given was batch 3, so it’s still early days for Bouvery CV as a product, but from what Danny Bouvery tells me, it’s very much being produced in a similar way to craft chocolate. Each batch will have subtle differences, and I expect it will develop over time. It’s currently made with a blend of Peru, Dominican Republic and Ecuadorian cocoa which produces a very strongly chocolatey flavour.

I managed to consume half the bottle before deciding it would be good to get some opinion from friends, so took the rest to a cocktail party at a friends house. It’s the kind of drink that would be perfect for chocolate based cocktails if it weren’t for one thing: It’s just too good to mix.

My friends universally loved it neat served neat, and within a matter of minutes the bottle was gone.

My one experiment with mixing it was to add it to a white chocolate and coconut hot chocolate drink. Simply stirring it in was enough to take a sweet and creamy hot drink to another level.

I’m quite certain that it could do the same for many drinks, cocktails and desserts, both hot and cold. But to truly enjoy Bouvery CV, you really have to drink it neat, preferably over ice and with friends.

Bouvery CV is not yet available to buy in the UK, but it is available in the US and to buy online. I really hope it comes to the UK soon, because in my opinion, there really isn’t anything else that comes close. In the mean time, if you’re outside the US, I’d suggest having a word with any travelling friends and getting them to bring back a case or three.

You might also like...