Tasting fine chocolate, and being able to find those flavour notes and discern them is not easy for many beginners. This is especially true for plain single origin dark chocolate. Plain in ingredients, but not in flavour. This is what the article will focus on. The truth is, you are likely a lot better than you think.

The reason many people refer to themselves as “bad tasters” is because they don’t know how to go about it, not because you are naturally bad at it. We all have the tools necessary to get better at tasting fine foods, including fine chocolate. The important part is learning the use the tools our body has.

For some discerning flavours in fine foods comes easy. Just like it’s more easy than others to learn how to play the guitar. Anyone has what it takes to learn to play the guitar, but for some its easier than others. Some never had a lesson in their lives, some had a few, and some needed many. Some people just have a talent and will be star guitar players, while others will reach a plateau at some point. The point is, anyone can learn to play guitar, and anyone can learn to better find and articulate the flavour in fine chocolate.

Below are some pointers you may not have thought of. They may not all apply to you, but it is something to consider for yourself, or to tell others you know who are frustrated with their chocolate tasting skills.

You’re selecting the wrong bars

It’s not all fine chocolate

Just because a chocolate bar is expensive, wrapped beautifully, or has awards associated with them does not mean it’s actually a fine flavoured chocolate bar. Even if it is a “cult” favourite within the fine chocolate social media world, does not mean it’s a well crafted bar. There are many craft chocolate bars and brands that in my opinion taste no better than a Lindt bar, and sometimes even worse. People who take my lessons are always amazed when I said that, and finally admit that they don’t like “fill in the blank” brand, and don’t understand why they always see people on Instagram or social media promote it.

There are many incentives for people to promote brands these days. Sometimes they get paid to do so, or have a “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” relationship out there. Also, many new chocolate sommeliers or self-proclaimed enthusiasts are insecure with their preferences, and follow the crowd or jump on the bandwagon in order to feel accepted into the fine chocolate world.

So be aware that some bars or brands are just not that great. And although they were made from bean to bar, the maker is not skillful enough to make it what I would call a fine chocolate bar.

As well, I understand the challenge as a beginner knowing which chocolate bars in the stores is fine or just well branded bulk chocolate. This is why I developed the very first Bean To Bar World Map, which is now an app. It’s free! And it’s a great way to start exploring fine craft chocolate makers around the world. Find one in your area, or a place you may visit. I can’t guarantee you will love them all, but it surely is a great place to start!

Some fine chocolate is more subtle than others

Also keep in mind that some makers prefer a more subtle flavour experience than others. I find this very true in Europe. In fact, when I began my journey in fine chocolate nearly 15 years ago, nearly all fine chocolate I had was from Europe. When I started to discover new North American brands, I was surprised how in your face the flavours were. This is still very true today.

I find that some makers who prefer to use a conche (not just a refiner/melanger), tend to produce chocolate with much more subtle flavour notes. They are there, but are harder to find especially for beginners. I am not trying to say one is better than they other, as I do appreciate both, but it is something to be aware of. It may help for you to start with bars that have more pronounced flavour notes, and then get into the more subtle brands after you have gotten better at articulating the flavours in those bars.

This link here will take you to a page on my website which includes some bars I sell that may be more easier to articulate for beginners.

You’re not being present

You don’t always have to go all out when enjoying fine chocolate. Sometimes I would have a bar or two in my bag, and enjoy a bite or two at school when I was studying. Or take it when you’re doing errands for a moment of satisfaction between all the things you have to do.

However, if you really are trying to improve your tasting skills, you need to make the effort to find some time and really focus on it. Set some time aside once a week or so and create an atmosphere. Find a quite space, maybe play some relaxing music, and really get into it. Read the bar labels (all the stuff you never really pay attention to). Get to know the maker of the bar, and all the information they want you to know. Then sit and taste 2 or 3 bars and take a few minutes enjoying each one. Go back and do it again. Log your findings and go back and refer to them. The Bean To Bar Compass I developed is a great tool for logging your chocolate tasting experiences. Trying the same bar at different times over a year, and go back and see what flavours were consistent and which were not. This will help you understand which flavours were coming from the chocolate bar, and which were perhaps just something from the moment (a mixture of previous foods you ate, the aromas around you at the time, etc.).

Being present will not only help you improve your tasting skills, but also offer you a moment of relaxation.

You’re placing too much importance on the flavour suggestions

Many people think that the flavour suggestions on the back of your bar (or wine bottle, or bag of coffee beans) is written in stone. As if the top sommeliers in the world got together and decided that “these must be the flavours of this bar!”. No, this isn’t so. The flavour suggestions are there for two reasons. One, to entice the buyer to make a simple plain dark chocolate bar sound more enticing to the general public. And the second is to help offer you the consumer an idea of what fine flavours you may expect.

However, flavour is very complex. Even top chocolate sommeliers will disagree on what the specific flavour notes are. The suggested flavours were put there from the maker as a way to help you make a purchasing decision. Sometimes I agree with what the flavour suggestions are. Sometimes I kind of agree. And Sometimes I completely disagree. Flavour is too complex and to individual to have it written in stone. It does not mean the flavour in the bar is 100% subjective, no. But it does mean that there are many factors that come into play including:

The quantity and types of taste buds you have in your mouth (some people pick up bitterness differently than others)
The types and quantities of olfactory receptors in our nose that pick up the aromas, which can vary from individual to individual based on genetics
Your tolerance or experience with bitter foods, how much sugar you regularly eat, and other tastant thresholds will impact how you experience the chocolate. Someone who always has sugar in their coffee and quite the sweet tooth will find a simple 70% dark bar too bitter to pick up any of the nice aromas in it.
Your repertoire of past foods and aromas in your brain. We all eat and have preferences for different foods. We enjoy different scents. We have a collection of past taste, flavour, and aroma experiences in our brain. Therefore, we will land on different specifics when trying to articulate the flavours in our fine chocolate. One may say blackberry, one says raspberry, and one says apricot. As beginner tastings, they are pretty much all concluding on a bright tart fruity note.
The aromas in the room your tasting the chocolate, aromas from your clothes, lotions, etc. will all impact or alter the flavours you taste in that moment.
The foods you ate that day prior to tasting may still linger in your mouth and impact the flavour of the chocolate that day
The order in which you taste the chocolates can alter how you perceive their overall flavour
How likely you are to pay attention to your food in general

This is not an exhaustive list, but this gives you an idea of many factors that can influence what final flavours you articulate in your fine chocolate. Never taste a chocolate trying to taste what the suggested flavour notes are. Those are just a guide for some people. Really focus on what it is you yourself are experiencing.

Your chocolate, you, or the room is cold

Cold & chocolate do not work well together. Image by @wlll

This is a simple one, but an important one. It doesn’t matter to me if you actually enjoy your chocolate bars cold or cool. However, this will dim the flavours. To get the most out of your fine chocolate, never eat it cold. Let it get to room temperature at least.

If the room and/or you are cold, this will also dim the flavour. If it’s winter, and you find your fingers and especially nose are cold, warm up! A cold nose will impede to a degree the aromas you pick up (kind of like a stuffy nose). A quick solution is to sip some hot water before each bite to warm the mouth, warmth your breath, warm your nose, and warm the chocolate. Trust me it works!

You don’t have a reference point

Do you remember the first time you learned to play an instrument? Did you know on day 1, or even day 5, what a A or a C sounded like. No. The teacher may play the scale, and you can agree all the sounds are different. However, only a trained ear will know what an A sounds like in isolation. An better trained ear will know if that A is flat or sharp or not. The same is with flavour. Articulating flavours is a lot like learning the scale and know what each note is in isolation. However, to know, you need to hear it over and over, and hear them along other notes.

When it comes to enjoying your fine chocolate, enjoy at least 2 at a time. Or if you are true beginner, enjoy it next to a commercial chocolate bar or some chocolate chips. Keep in mind the bar or chips may have flavour enhancers (vanilla, natural/artificial flavours), but going back and forth between them will highlight in your brain their differences. Once you can really notice the differences, it will become somewhat easier to articulate those different flavours.

You’re not breathing

Use those lungs. Exhale, exhale, exhale.

Pretty much all chocolate tasting guides tell you to look, listen, smell, and melt the chocolate in your mouth, but stop at THE most important aspects of tasting fine chocolate. You need to chew it and move it around in your mouth constantly, while (and this is the most important part) exhale out of your nose as the chocolate melts and moves around in your mouth. Exhaling while you eat, or retronasal olfaction, is crucial to getting the most flavour out of our food. Chocolate is not like coffee or wine that evaporates easily in the mouth, lifting the aromas that travel into your nasopharynx. Chocolate is a thick heavy fat, and it needs help! This is why you need to rub it and move it around on your tongue (don’t just let it sit there as many tasting guides suggest). And again, the most important is to exhale, exhale, exhale, through your nose as the chocolate melts. If you can’t hear yourself exhale, your not exhaling well enough.

You are a smoker

Now this is not to make you feel bad for being a smoker. It really does not matter to me. However, it will impede your ability to pick up and articulate the fine flavours not only in chocolate but many other foods. There was a study on rats who lived in polluted cities vs not, and the ones who lived in polluted cities has their olfactory nerves (that pick up aromas) impeded. The same is true for your olfactory nerves. Your sense of smell is very important to flavour. If you smoke, the “pollution” from the constant particles and smoke when you exhale will damage the olfactory nerves in your nasopharynx. The good news is, these can grow back if you quick smoking. Just something to consider if you are a smoker and wonder why it is difficult for you.

You eat lots of fast food

Nothing wrong with enjoying a good burger, but eating lots of restaurant foods which normally have high amounts of salt, fat, and condiments can reduce your ability to extract flavour from more natural simple whole foods.

Again, this is not to make you feel bad. However, if you eat lots of fast food, or eat out a lot (even at “higher end” establishments) you are consuming a lot of salt, sugar, and sour foods on a regular basis. Condiments are a big one. Pizzas with lots of sweet/tart sauce, cheese. Burgers or chicken with sweet/sour/salty sauces and spices. Sweet juices, shakes, smoothies, ice cream. Processed ready to eat foods (which often contain flavour enhancers such as natural or artificial flavours). Again, nothing wrong with enjoying these. However, if you do eat these quite often they lower or raise your thresholds for certain things.

The high levels of salt/sour/sweet elements makes your brain accustomed to this, and so anything with normal levels of salt/sour/sugar will seem dim or even absent. Many foods (even “healthy” ones) contain flavour enhancers these days. They contain them because the foods themselves are not made with the best ingredients and/or they are competing for your attention from the fast food industry. I’m not going to debate here whether artificial or natural flavourings (which is not naturally in the way you may expect) are good or not. But the truth is, if you don’t cook from scratch yourself regularly, most of the foods you eat have flavour enhancers. This means our brains are expecting a level of unnatural flavour. Therefore, when we consume actual natural real foods, the thresholds are so high (unnaturally) that the wonderful flavours in the natural foods seem dim or absent.

People who tend to gravitate towards fine foods (fine chocolate, wine, tea, cheeses) tend to be those more picky about ingredients and the quality of their foods. Therefore it is often easier to pick out the fine flavours and appreciate them. Again, if you do eat out often, and/or eat lots of fast/prepared foods, it doesn’t meant you will never enjoy fine foods at the same level. These thresholds are learned, and can be brought back to normal levels again if one chooses.

Perhaps you are going through a very busy time in your life with work or school overwhelming your life. The only food you’ve been eating out of convivence is whatever is quick and close by. Maybe you even opt in for more fatty/tasty fast foods because the stress of your life is forcing you to find a moment of satisfaction. A few weeks of that, and that’s already enough time to alter your thresholds and have your brain impacted making your fine foods seem dim and flavourless. Just something to keep in mind. Again, this can be reversed with patience and consistency.

You need more practice, mindfully

I touched on this above a few times, but yes, practice. This doesn’t mean to scarf down a bar here and there a few times a week. It means built it into your diet and habits. Have a couple pieces here and there with your tea in the morning, or a little appetizer before you eat dinner. Take 5-10 minutes, and really enjoy them, analyze them, log what you find perhaps, and do this consistently. Just like learning a new instrument, consistency is key. You’re wiring your brain more and more each time.

Tasting our foods at a deeper level, and thinking about the flavours at a deeper level is something most people rarely or never do. Therefore, when you start to do this, your brain is not prepared. You will need to practice, gain experience tasting in order to improve. Your need to build up the neuron networks in your brain that bring together all your senses and your ability to articulate what it is you are tasting. This doesn’t happen over night, or within a few months, or even a year for some people. Give yourself time. It’s not a bad thing to practice!

Don’t eat it on a full stomach or after a big meal

Do this AFTER you have enjoyed your fine chocolate. Eating chocolate as you would dessert after a big meal will reduce your ability to notice the fine flavours within it.

Being hungry decreases our sensitivity to flavour. This is automatic, as it’s the body’s’ way to get you to stop eating when your stomach is getting full. This is a big reason why people say to eat slower to lose weight so your body has more time to tell you I’m full, stop eating.

Since you are trying to taste not just a simple food, the more hungry you are, the more intense the flavours will seem. Think of how good food tastes after a day of hiking, or after a long run, or after a busy day when you forgot to eat breakfast and lunch.

If you are having trouble finding and articulating the flavour of your fine chocolate, think of eating it on an empty stomach, or right before a meal instead of after. Is there really a better appetizer than chocolate? That was a rhetorical question. The answer is no.

Aroma & Taste Interference

If you are eating your fine dark chocolate next to the kitchen where you are braising a roast or making a pot of sauce, you’re going to have a lot of aroma interference. I remember a tasting many years ago with some friends at my friend’s house. She was baking Portobello mushrooms in the oven while we were having a tasting. Her and others mentioned how the sample was having earthy and mushroom notes. I reminded them of the smell of the mushrooms from the kitchen. They laughed.

Be aware of strong odours around you, as well as aromas and tastes lingering in your mouth and nose from previous foods. If you ate strong foods recently with lots of garlic, onions, spices, or coffee, those flavours can linger in your mouth for hours or the whole day sometimes.

Garlic, chilis, ginger, turmeric, and gloves are all great ingredients, but if you just ate a meal with lots of these ingredients added, and then try and taste some fine chocolate, you will have a great deal of interference.

Now, we do need to learn how to taste with interference. The point of enjoying fine chocolate is not to go into a plastic bubble void of all interference in order to appreciate it. But, if you are a beginner, and have trouble articulating or picking out the flavours then just be mindful of any strong aromas in your room, coming from you, or from foods you recently ate.

The best time to really enjoy fine chocolate is in the morning when your palate is fresh and you are hungry. Your sense of flavour is usually at its peak!

Stuffed up nose or allergies

A stuffy nose can’t be avoided sometimes, but at least it wont last forever. For those of us who struggle with seasonal allergies, it can linger far longer than we have patience for sometimes. The key here is to be aware of it first of all. This may be why you can’t pick up much flavour. Remember, flavour is a combination of all our senses, but particularly taste (what is picked up in the mouth such as sweet, sour, bitter) and aroma (pick up by our olfactory receptors in the nose). When we have a stuffy nose, we can still taste the sweet, sour elements of our food, but not much else beyond that. The aromas is what gives our food its unique attributes. And if our olfactory receptors are blocked due to swollen tissue and lots of mucus in our nasopharynx, then our brain is not getting the information it needs to complete the flavour image.

Something that helps, as mentioned above, is breathing! Exhale, and exhale strongly. Really push the air out through your nose. Take big breaths, and force it out slowly, quickly, or pulsate it. You still may not be able to taste as well before the cold/allergies, but it will help.

You need a guide

The Bean To Bar Compass is a unique tool and workbook I designed based on my years of research and chocolate sommelier experience. It is a pocket-size one-of-a-kind chocolate tasting notebook that is designed to help beginners get started or to help intermediates improve their abilities. Logging your findings will really help you learn from your experience.

Just like learning to play an instrument, some are better at grasping it than others. I remember when I wanted to learn how to crochet, I found it much more difficult to teach myself than I thought it would be. I read a book with a guide, I watched videos online, but I just couldn’t quite get it. All it took was a friend of a friend to show me one night, and in that moment I got it!

Sometimes we need to watch someone do it, or have someone guide us. Then we realize how amazingly simple it is, and we kick ourselves for not getting it. Sometimes we had a guide/teacher, but they just didn’t explain it in the way you needed to really grasp it. Don’t get discouraged! There are many free resources out there. Bean To Bar World offers many.

Check out the Tasting 101 section in the Academy for free resources. Think of purchasing the Bean To Bar Compass, which is a one-of-a-kind tasting tool and workbook. Even have a fun chocolate tasting with me! Yes, sometimes I do one-on-one tastings and you have lots of time to ask all the questions you want. You can even book your own chocolate tasting tutoring lesson.

So if you need it, the help is there. All the best on your journey with fine chocolate.

13 Tips For Those Who Have Trouble Tasting Fine Chocolate