During our travels in South America I took advantage of many opportunities to expand my knowledge of chocolate. We spent most of a week in Mindo, Ecuador, living above the chocolate factory and restaurant on 9 de Octobre street. The cloud forest makes for a lovely natural setting to rest awhile and experience the many beautiful birds, and of course sample the product. (If you go, try to get the hammock room. It overlooks a “pico pico” berry tree, which attracts birds every morning and evening.)
The shop has a small cacao orchard on-site, where we saw the pods growing on the trees, and the processes that go into fermenting, drying, shelling, grinding and processing the cacao into chocolate.
One night we participated in a traditional process of making a liquid chocolate drink from fermented cacao beans, dried hot chiles, and honey. There’s no milk involved, since this process predates the invention of modern “hot” chocolate.
Onward to Colombia! We were fortunate to score 2 tickets to a new-product rollout/tasting at Tilin Tilin Chocolate in Medellin, Colombia. The tasting sheets looked like this:
Each sample is judged based on the categories on the right, translated from Spanish as follows: Acidic; Floral; Sweet; Fruity; Nutty; and Chocolaty. Intensity is rated from 0 to 5. Then you “describe the texture”; some chocolate is very smooth and buttery, others are powdery or grainy, and some have a plastic texture.
Select about 5 chocolates, all around 60 to 75% cacao with no extra flavorings, nuts or fruits. You want to judge the chocolate itself, and I think you will be surprised at the wide variations in taste and texture that exist. There are a number of varietals of cacao trees such as Forastero, Criollo, and Trinitario. Then there are the rare Nacional beans from Ecuador which are used at Mindo. Additionally, there are single-source beans from certain forests, and each area has its own “terroir” just like grapes and coffee. Some producers specialize in “bean to bar” production, which gives you the unique flavor profile of a certain forest in a certain season, just like a fine wine. I especially enjoy Tilin Tilin and Santander brands from Colombia, and Pacari or Mindo brands from Ecuador. Santander and Pacari are available in grocery stores in their respective countries, and may be available on amazon.com.
You can also do your tasting with any high end bars from your local grocer, and throw in a mass-produced street variety chocolate bar for good fun.
Make note of the ingredients listed on the wrapper. A 70% bar is 70% fermented, processed cacao mass. The remainder is mostly sugar. Some bars also contain cocoa butter, vanilla, and possibly lecithin which alters the texture.
I have run this process multiple times, and I have improvised until I developed the following rules.
- Prepare to do your tasting when people haven’t recently drunk wine or eaten spicy foods. These combinations can be fun too, but they generally reduce your ability to sense the intricacies of the chocolate. (If you’re like us, this probably means you have to start the tasting right away when the guests have arrived.)
- Cut the bars into small pieces, no larger than your index fingernail. Put them in small bowls alongside the original wrappers.
- Provide the tasters with judging sheets.
- Provide a very weakly brewed “tea” of hot water, possibly with a light flavor, or just plain. You need to reset your palate after each tasting. Chocolate melts at normal mouth temperature, which is part of the joy of cacao. It’s easy to lose the right temperature if you drink cold or lukewarm water.
- Instruct the tasters to chew the first sample, only until the chocolate starts to melt. Don’t abrade your tongue on the chocolate; doing so will decrease your taste and texture sensations in later tastings. Once the chocolate has significantly (but not completely) melted, roll the chocolate around on your tongue and enjoy. (Tasters will generally be silent during this part of the tasting.)
- Make your notes on this sample. Then rinse your mouth with very warm water, and wait at least two minutes for your mouth to normalize. While you’re waiting, discuss your findings on this chocolate; it’s so interesting to find out how other people perceive the same bar. There’s no “right answer”, we each experience the product differently.
- Repeat with the next sample.
- If you find that each successive sample is less pleasant, you may have achieved tasting overload. Stop and let some time pass before proceeding.
For fun you might end the tasting with a bar that contains nuts, fruits, chile, flavoring, sea salt or cacao nibs.