How to conduct a fine chocolate tasting
There is no one way to conduct a fine chocolate tasting. It can be as simple as enjoying a few bites properly and mindfully at your desk, or can be as elaborate as a decorated table with a long lineup of bars. However, there are important points to consider when trying to appreciate and understand fine chocolate properly. Watch this recent video I posted below as I go through different aspects such as why have a chocolate tasting, why we focus on dark chocolate, how to prepare yourself, how to set up, how to conduct the tasting, and how to store your bars.
How to taste fine chocolate made by bean-to-bar makers.
A few quick points to consider when conducting your next tasting are as follows:
Although there is nothing visually alluring by these little brown squares of chocolate, they are packed with more flavour and more interesting flavour than most pretty bright bonbons and truffles.
Be hungry
There’s nothing worse than when your guests come to a tasting just after a big meal, or are eating a snack or finishing a meal before you get started. Not only are the flavours from the food going to interfere immensely, but being full will greatly impede their ability to detect flavour.
When we are full, our body begins to “shut down” or mute the sensitivity to the aromas and flavours in our foods. The less hungry we are due to eating a meal, the less sensitive we are to tasting foods. You notice this anything you are eating a big dinner at a wedding or Christmas. There comes a point where you barely even taste the food anymore, but you keep eating because, well the food is there!
This is one reason why many people are frustrated when at a tasting and not being able to detect the flavours. If you or your guests have trouble articulating and picking out the flavours in fine chocolate or fine foods in general, then being hungry will help with this.
Ensure that you and/or your guests come hungry to a tasting. Request they do not eat at least 2-3 hours beforehand, and not to have a big meal. If your guests are paying good money to be at your tasting, or you’re paying good money for this fine chocolate, then make it worthwhile for everyone: come to a tasting hungry!
Cleanse your palate with hot water
Chocolate is not just about the flavour, but about the texture of the fat: cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is very unique, and is as important (if not more) than the flavour of the chocolate itself. How the chocolate feels in the mouth and how it melts can really turn someone off or alter their perception of both the flavour and overall hedonic rating of it.
Therefore, do not drink cold or room temperature water or carbonated water. This will impede the melt, make the chocolate feel more waxy in the mouth (due to not melting right away due to the coolness of the water), and coolness of your mouth will mute to a degree the release of the aromas and hence flavour of the chocolate.
Other palate cleansers such as apple, crackers, or polenta will add too much interference and greatly alter the flavour of the chocolate. Even something as bland as polenta with its slight gain/corn/nutty notes will alter how you perceive your chocolates. These would be great for pairings, but are not ideal for cleansing your palate.
Hot water is ideal because the heat lifts the heavy fat off the tongue and cheeks takes with it the flavour of the chocolate. It also warms up the mouth and encourages both melt and release of aromas from the chocolate.
If you find other palate cleansers more enjoyable, no problem. However, keep in mind that things such as cool waters/beverages or any other foods will interfere with the qualities of the fine chocolate.
Don’t Chew your chocolate?!
You hear this often, and when I started off in fine chocolate back in 2007 I heard this a lot too. Even today, people still thing chewing your chocolate is somehow uncivilized or unprofessional. It is not. So why do people say this? Most people say this because they don’t want you to quickly eat and swallow your chocolate. They want you to keep in your your mouth for a prolonged period of time in order to enjoy it for longer. However, you’re an adult, and you can control your swallowing. So it is perfectly okay to chew your chocolate. I often say chew your chocolate 2-3 times, but don’t swallow.
Chewing your chocolate a couple times does a few things. It helps break up the chocolate so you have more surface area for the chocolate aromas to be released. It encourages melt, and also encourages the chocolate to move all around the mouth, not just sit in one spot in the tongue. If you have had a tasting with me before, or have purchased the Bean To Bar Compass I developed, you will understand that mouth movement when eating chocolate is very crucial to flavour development.
The idea of letting the chocolate sit like a lump on a log on your tongue while you patiently wait for it to melt is not only an antiquated idea with tasting chocolate, but also a great to limit the overall flavour and satisfaction with that wonderful fine chocolate you’re trying to appreciate. However, in addition to this, there is one more if not the most important aspect of tasting chocolate. Breathing.
Breathing is the most important thing you can do when tasting chocolate.
Not just breathing any which way, but I’m talking about retronasal olfaction. This is exhaling out of your nose as you eat your food. This is THE most important technique to appreciating your fine chocolate. I can’t stress enough how much more flavourful your chocolate will be and how much deeper the taste will be if you actively and strongly exhale out of your nose as you move that chocolate around in your mouth.
All those fine “flavours” in our fine chocolate comes from the aroma molecules. These aroma molecules are only detected by the olfactory receptors in our nasopharynx (the area above the roof of your mouth and below your cranial cavity). When you have a cold and this area swells up and becomes congested, you realize you can’t “taste” your food. The truth is, you can taste your food. Your mouth can pick out how sweet, sour, or salty the food is. However, your olfactory receptors cannot pick up the specific aromas, so your food becomes very bland.
If you passively breath while the chocolate is in your mouth, it’s as if you are purposely behaving as though you have a cold. You’re not allowing those aromas to reach the olfactory receptors. And those who appreciate fine chocolate know that there are many flavour notes to fine chocolate that change as you continue to taste it. Therefore, the more you breath and the longer you breath, the more aromas from the chocolate you are sending to your olfactory receptors, and the more flavour you will extract from your chocolate. You will actually “taste” more from the chocolate just by breathing more and more.
If you wish to learn more about tasting fine chocolate, you’re welcome to book a virtual tasting with me, and we can go over this in more details. Also consider purchasing the one-of-a-kind Bean To Bar Compass which is a mindful notebook of how to understand, analyze, and think about your fine chocolate. It is more than just a notebook, as it has tools and is filled with links to pages on my website to delve more into various topics of fine chocolate tasting.
