Tasting & Appreciating Chocolate
By Maralyn Hill and Brenda Hill
‘The Tandem Tasters’

Chocolate has to be shiny, crunchy, and bitter, with low sugar and fat content and savory in mouth.

Good quality chocolate has 50 to 75% cocoa solids in the contents and no more than 30% sugar. Low quality chocolate has 10 to 15% cocoa solids and a higher percentage of sugar. It may also contain vegetable fat and artificial flavors.

Salon du Chocolate says you should look for fragrance, texture, harmony and after taste. In other words, look for polish, shine and color; aroma, flavor, consistency and overall taste.

Tips on Tasting Chocolate:  

• First of all, just look. Concentrate carefully on the polish, the shine, and especially the color of the chocolate; colors ranging from: milky beiges, to pure mahoganies, to deep dark brown... an essential detail that uncovers the varieties of cocoa beans used.

• Breathe deeply, smell the chocolate, fill your mind and body with its aromas. This is a deliciously simple first initiation into the aromatic secrets of chocolate.

• Listen - break a square into fragments between your fingers, and listen to the crackling sound it makes. Savor the crackling as it hits your teeth.

• Experience the taste. Start by biting into a quarter of a chocolate square, to taste the initial flavors, aromas and consistency. Then bite again and again, twice, three times (or more) and take the time to savor the various individual flavors. Let the chocolate melt slowly and delicately on your tongue to unveil its flavors and its aromas.

• Take a moment to concentrate on your tongue, to feel, to savor the different flavors: acid (sensations on the sides of the tongue, stimulating salivation), then if you wait a little longer you may experience the bitterness (persisting sensation felt at the back of the tongue, becoming gradually more intense).

• Taste again, but this time concentrate on your nose, and discover the aromas which unleash themselves one after the other. Similar to wine, you will first smell the most volatile aromas (primary or head aromas): These are instantaneous, fleeting flower or fruit aromas, which volatilize quickly and fade away in the middle of the tasting process. If you miss them... then just simply start the taste experience again!

• Aromas that are unveiled in the middle of the tasting experience, known as body aromas: These are essentially hot aromas, such as roasted almonds, hot bread crust, spicy mix, etc. If you let yourself be seduced a little longer by the pleasure of the taste experience, then you will be able to savor the less volatile aromas of certain chocolates, known as final aromas: These are often woody, roasted.