Category: Taste & Flavour

If you think about it, food pairing is our bread and butter. We love bread and we love butter. Sure, we might not fancy a dry crust of bread or a bowlful of butter on its own; but this is a tried and tested pairing that elevates the flavours and textures of each component. It’s a combination that offers a sense of completion. Although the simplicity of this duo is something that we take for granted, it allows us to understand the pairing philosophy.

So, what happens when we think about purposefully pairing food and drinks that already have nuanced and intricate flavour profiles of their own? Chocolate has one of the most complex flavour catalogues known of any ingredient. It can stand up to bold flavours. Pairing chocolate with wine is well-established, and increasingly even rum and gin. But what about whisky?

Whisky and Chocolate: A Parallel Pair?

This is a combination that isn’t fully codified yet, but we think it really should be. Our resident Scotch expert, Rachel McCormack, suggests that the matching potential is almost infinite and that great parallels exist between whisky and chocolate. In both cases, just three ingredients create an astounding range of bottles and bars. Each crafting process designs a unique flavour fingerprint: whether that be with water, grain, and yeast, or cocoa beans, cocoa butter, and sugar.

Rachel is right. Both Scotch whisky and the craft chocolate movement are particularly interested in the sourcing of their ingredients, as well as the cultural significance that they carry. Famously, single malt whisky is traceable to the distillery it came from and even the barley that made it, just as craft chocolate can be directly connected back to its makers and its growers.

At each stage of the whisky and craft chocolate production processes, different decisions are made in order to create specific profiles within the range and the possibility of flavour to be found from within the same combination of ingredients. Arguably, this talent for taste is almost alchemical.

In The Scotsman’s culinary podcast, Scran, Rachel also adeptly pairs the progression of the two industries. In part, other craft movements are the successors of the whisky industry.

Geographical indications ensure that Scotch whisky can only be produced in Scotland and has to have been aged in an oak barrel in Scotland for a minimum of three years. Although craft chocolate is made globally from beans from around the world we at Cocoa Runners define craft chocolate very strictly as a movement which values ethical trade, sustainable practices, traceability, and top-quality chocolate. 

In the podcast, Rachel compares whisky drinkers’ commitment to taste and flavour and savouring good malt whisky with the pleasure that craft chocolate brings to those of us lucky enough to know about it. Unlike chocolate, Scotch whisky does not have a mass-produced equivalent. There is a stringent production process for all types of Scotch whisky and a powerful safeguarding body in the Scotch Whisky Association, something which craft chocolate completely lacks. Additionally, the chocolate industry needs to address many alternative aspects. First and foremost, the temptation of a better quality product must also be paired with information and education.  

Why whisky?

Whisky works. It provides a counterpart to chocolate, complementing strong flavours without overpowering them. Pairing is an opportunity to elucidate the layers of this reciprocal relationship. Don’t just take our word for it, give it a try for yourself!

Tasting Tips:

1) What do I do?

Despite what you might think, pairing does not require any hard and fast rules. It’s really all about experimentation. There’s no right order to it, just make sure to savour what you’re trying. Compare combinations and search for the nuances within them. Try the whisky first, then put a small piece of chocolate in your mouth and let it melt, once you have the flavour of the chocolate take another sip of whisky. If it’s a great match the whisky and chocolate should sing together, you will notice new and enhanced flavour notes in both. If it doesn’t, you’ll know, try a different pairing and chalk it down to experience.

2) How can I identify tasting notes?  

Jumping straight into the jargon can be a little intimidating. However pretentious it seems, we promise that articulating flavours can really help you to identify them. It’s improbable that the word ‘vegetal’ comes to the forefront of your mind when you think of chocolate, but it can help you to distinguish between flavour categories. Yes, the chocolate might taste earthy, but would you describe that as green or brown? If the whisky is smoky is it tobacco, bonfire or barbecue smoke? Can you name the new or enhanced flavours you get from the matching? Visualising these flavour sensations will definitely help with your observations. In the world of whisky, Johnnie Walker have devised a comprehensive flavour wheel. Similarly at Cocoa Runners, we have our own ‘Great Wave’ of taste.

Again, these images will also help you to visualise the timing of the pairing. Look through the “whisky window” and work out where the flavours complement, clash, or coincide. For example, be careful that the flavour height of the whisky does not drown out the delicacy of the craft chocolate melt. 

3) Do they change?

Pairing and tasting are, of course, multi-sensory experiences. You should smell each whisky and chocolate before you taste them as this allows you to appreciate the entirety of the flavour (find out more about the olfactory system here). In terms of texture, try rubbing a drop of whisky on the back of your hand. As it evaporates, take note of the cooling sensation it creates. Does this change the mouthfeel of either the whisky or the chocolate? What additional complexities can you identify by focussing on different senses?

Taster

If you’re looking for an introduction, why not try Chocolate Tree’s Whisky Nibs Dark Chocolate? This bar topped the table as the best Food and Drink Product in Scotland, 2017. Using a similar method to Raaka’s Cask-Aged Bourbon, Alistair and Friederike, have soaked some of the cocoa nibs in a single malt whisky from the Isle of Islay. Consequently, the inclusion of peat and wood smoke notes gives the chocolate a slightly sharper finish.

Main Event

If you already want to go the extra mile, you can visit the Johnnie Walker HQ in Edinburgh. They offer a range of live music events and immersive experiences which exhibit their world-class whisky. 

Feeling whisky? Then why not try the Tasting Gift Set that Rachel has helped us expertly curate. The box includes three different bottles and bars to get you started from the comfort of your own home. You can also follow along with tasting notes from one of our pre-recorded virtual tastings here. A fun night with friends and a tasting kit? Now that really is the perfect pairing.

At our craft chocolate and wine tastings, our wine partners put forward an enviably neat explanation of how a wine develops flavour, texture and taste on its journey from vine to bottle and through its time in bottle:

1. What happens on the vineyard: the grapes, terroir, etc. create the ‘fruity’ flavours in both red and white wine, like citrus, berry, jammy etc.
2. What happens as the wine is made: pressing, barrels, etc. generate flavours like toasty, creamy, smoke, etc.
3. What happens as the wine ages and oxidizes: results in flavours and sensations like leather, caramel, roundedness, etc.

(For more on this, come to a wine & craft chocolate tasting; see here).

Chocolate, sadly, isn’t quite as simple. Or if it is, we haven’t found as concise a segmentation.

Chocolate has the same complexities of flavour, taste, texture and mouthfeel as wine, but these complexities are interwoven. Each stage of growing, crafting and even ageing a craft chocolate bar (yes you can get vintage chocolate; we sometimes have some!) can yield similar results. For example the ‘citrus’ or ‘berry’ flavours in a bar can be the result of bean variety, fermentation, roasting and conching.

The common theme that really drives flavour and quality in chocolate is the TIME taken at each stage. And TIME (which is partly a proxy for care) impacts each stage of cocoa on the farm and chocolate as it’s crafted.

Below we have recommended some bars to illustrate these differences.

The Tree, Pod and Cocoa Varietal

As with apples, wine and almost every fruit, different cocoa varietals have very different flavour profiles. A great way to experience this is to compare how different makers can produce radically different sensations with the same machinery from very different beans (see below for examples from Tosier).

To grow the cocoa trees that yield these pods and beans takes time and effort; once a seed or seedling is planted it takes at least 3-5 years before its first harvest (and they will continue to produce fruit for decades to come, contributing to biodiversity in the rainforest). And you have to be able to recognise the best time to pick the fruit; as with wine, ripeness is incredibly important. Many farmers know their trees and their pods; they know when the colour change and texture of the pod is just right and can identify when it ‘sounds’ right upon being knocked. To compare how amazingly distinctive flavours can be from different varieties, see the pair of taster bars below from Mikkel Friss-Holm.

By contrast, most mass produced chocolate uses only a few varieties with limited diversity, with the emphasis on rigorous productivity. But all too often these clones are planted at the expense of the rainforest; as with other commodity crops, rainforests are destroyed and mono-cultures are planted. Mass produced cocoa is harvested when it’s convenient to harvest with no account for ripeness. To quote an industry expert “Ripeness in mass-produced cocoa is more about picking the time when you can get the most volume“. And these clones don’t have fine flavour (that’s why most mass-produced dark chocolate bars have tonnes of additives and flavourings).

Harvesting and Fermentation

Depending on where the cocoa is growing, trees can be harvested a few times a year (normally twice, but sometimes more and occasionally only once). When cocoa is in harvest, it’s in season for a few months, but farmers harvest traditionally every two weeks to allow only ripe pods to be harvested, this is why central fermentation among smallholders is important, aggregating these small volumes enable better fermentation for ripe cocoa. And specialty sources of craft cocoa do their utmost to ensure only ripe pods make it into the next step.

And then the magic of fermentation occurs. This is where the flavour of the cocoa really starts. Before fermentation a cocoa seed is incredibly bitter and astringent, but surrounded by a delicious pulp. Once opened, the pulp reacts with local bacteria and yeasts to kick off a fermentation that turns the bitter, and astringent, cocoa seed into a cocoa bean that is recognisably ‘chocoalatey’.

Again, a magic ingredient in fermentation is TIME. The differences between, for example, a 5 day and 6 day fermentation are staggering; see Krak bars below. And for the differences that small changes in fermentation make, also see these double versus triple churned bars from Mikkel Friis-Holm.

By contrast mass-produced cocoa is often not properly fermented. Sometimes the beans are immediately dried leading to high levels of bitterness and astringency, they are then pressed for the cocoa butter (used for cosmetics etc. and far higher priced than the remaining cocoa mass). Indeed sometimes the beans are immediately pressed for the cocoa butter. The residual compressed cocoa mass is then turned into cocoa powder and used to make ‘chocolate’ ice cream, biscuits, cakes, etc. And even when the beans are fermented this is often lackadaisical, with beans piled into a heap for an indeterminate period with random raking. It’s a world of difference to the way farmers and makers ferment in wooden boxes for set times with specific turns at specific times.

Drying

The final stage on the farm is drying, and again time and care needs to be taken to dry the beans so that they neither go mouldy nor dry out. The way craft chocolate is dried plays a huge role in generating flavour. Most cocoa is sun dried to allow slow transition from fermentation and rich flavours continue to evolve. And huge care needs to be taken; too much time and the drying beans can bake; too little time and they will go mouldy.

One more twist at drying: in places such as Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Fiji it can be too rainy to rely on the sun to dry the fermented cocoa. Instead nearby fires are used to dry the beans. And the smoke from these beans can permeate the beans. This can generate intriguing flavours for those who are fans of Islay whisky, smoky teas or even smoky bacon crisps. Try the Firetree and Solomon’s Gold bars below (note: the Firetree beans are fully sun dried but the finished chocolate still display the hidden deep forest, woody, earthy, truffle aroma characteristic of this environment and terroir).

Provenance

One of the easiest ways to tell craft chocolate apart from mass-produced chocolate is by making sure you know where the beans are grown, harvested, fermented and dried. And by this we don’t mean the continent or country. “From Peru” works for Paddington Bear, but it doesn’t work for chocolate any more than it works for fine wine or speciality coffee or artisan cheese. You need to know as much as possible about the farm, co-operative and plantation as with other artisanal products.

What’s Next

Once the beans are dried they are sent to be ‘crafted’ or ‘processed’. And again, there are HUGELY different approaches between mass-produced confectionery and craft chocolate which explain their radically different flavours, textures and tastes. And again, TIME is a critical element. But mass-produced chocolate bars not only don’t detail where they source their beans but they also don’t (and arguably can’t) specify where their bars are made and processed.

Please do try some of the bars below. In addition, please spend some time with us at a craft chocolate tasting and learn more about everything we’ve discussed here.

Amongst warm-blooded mammals, humans have a number of unique traits, including:

1. We communicate with extensive vocabularies and a wide range of sound,
2. We run on two legs holding our heads high (birds aren’t mammals and lizards are cold-blooded),
3. We can detect flavour via both our mouths and our noses (through our sense of smell).

All three of these traits are due to the structure of our mouths. And they all provide compelling reasons to savour craft chocolate. 

Read below for more details.  And also see below for some milk and dark pairings which demonstrate how the bliss point works and the delight of savouring.

Taste, Flavour, and the Structure of our Mouths

We (and other animals) detect taste through a series of receptors, largely in our mouths (but also in our guts). Different animals have varying amounts and differing types of receptors; for example cats can’t detect sweetness, but are super sensitive to saltiness and water.

But taste is only a part of the pleasures of eating. There is also chemesthesis (the delight of a spicy meal or a mouth puckering, astringent wine). But for most of us the real joy is FLAVOUR (and for those who like spicy food, see here for more on chemesthesis and texture, mouthfeel etc., plus the perils of Anosmia and Parosmia in today’s Covid world).

FLAVOUR is different. And humans are (almost) unique here. Very few animals can detect flavour other than by sniffing through their nose. Humans are rare (and very fortunate) in that our mouths open up a pathway to our olfactory centre (aka our sense of smell) as we breathe. This is why when you have a cold, or hold your nose, you lose all sense of flavour (come to one of our tastings to find out more).

Dogs, cats and most animals have a highly developed sense of smell through their noses. In this sense they can detect ‘flavours’. But almost all animals, other than humans, have a transverse lamina which stops them being able to detect flavours once an item is in their mouth. Humans lack a ‘transverse lamina’. So that means we can detect flavour through ‘retronasal olfaction’. (Note: The absence of this lamina, plus the structure of our tongue, explains too why we can talk, and how we can run upright. See here for a more detailed explanation).

The Great News about Being Human and Savouring Flavours

This is GREAT NEWS. It may even explain why we like, and discovered, cooking. Indeed many argue that this gave rise to our development and civilization, as cooked food is for the most part far more nutritionally efficient than uncooked, raw foods.

It also gives us one of life’s truly great pleasures; savouring food and drink. As we eat and drink, FLAVOURS are released through chewing, salivating, melting and swirling round our mouths. Flavour is a huge part of the pleasure of living. Eating and drinking should be about more than survival, nutrition and health.

And chocolate is FANTASTIC for savouring. Like fine wine, chocolate has hundreds of different flavour volatiles and aromas. And they develop like a wave as you savour the chocolate.

And just to add to the fun, cocoa butter, the primary ingredient in most craft chocolate bars (there is more cocoa butter than cocoa solids in most cocoa beans), gives an amazing mouth texture. So we also can luxuriate in the melt and mouthfeel as we savour.

So why do we scoff chocolate?

Yet all too often chocolate, in particular chocolate confectionery, is scoffed. It is like a doughnut. Or a pringle. “Once you pop you can’t stop”.

This is because of another peculiarity of food and drink with humans; the so-called “bliss point”. The bliss point was discovered (or rather articulated) in the 1970s by a food researcher called Howard Moskowitz, who worked out that if you combine sugar, salt and fat, plus a little texture, human beings just don’t know how to stop eating. For anyone who has ever seen a Labrador attack food they’ll get the idea. All too often with many fast foods you just want to keep eating more, more and more. It’s hard to savour.

No plant, meat or fruit naturally contains a combination of sugar, salt and fat. But we definitely can’t resist the combination; perhaps because it hearkens back to the first meal for most of us (mother’s milk).

If you check the ingredients of most confectionery, you’ll see the familiar list of bliss point ingredients. And almost always the first ingredient will be sugar. But check the ingredients of any craft chocolate bar (with only a handful of exceptions) and it should always be cocoa(or depending on the country, cocoa beans or cocoa butter. Labelling regulations are complex!).

Having said this, there is a good claim to be made that the world’s first milk chocolate bars, launched by Daniel Peter and Henri Nestlé back in the 1870s, were the first bliss point food. Certainly their creation catalysed chocolate consumption with the creation of bliss point bars. Unfortunately during the twentieth century chocolate has become more about confectionery, becoming merely another ingredient like sugar, vegetable fat or palm oils to create processed snacks and confectionery where the flavour of chocolate is deliberately flattened.

Indeed the BIG difference between a craft milk chocolate bar (and indeed any craft chocolate bar) and confectionery is that you can SAVOUR the craft chocolate. The flavours will develop and emerge. You can use our unique human ability to detect the evolution of different flavours as a bar melts in your mouth. This doesn’t happen with confectionery. Confectionery, snacks and fast food are all about the first impression and initial sensation. And you’ll continue to reach for more and more (just like Doritos, Pringles, doughnuts, etc.). You’ve been gamed.

But if you want to savour and try this at home, please do! See below for some milk chocolate bars that you can savour, but you’ll also find hard not to have a second piece. Then compare them to their dark siblings (we’ve picked bars that are made from the same beans, and are offering a small saving on these bundles). And do download our ‘flavour wave’ to help you articulate these flavours, tastes and textures.

Further Reading

• The role of ortho-retronasal olfaction in mammalian cortical evolution
• Do foods taste the same to animals as they do to us?
• Direct behavioural evidence for retronasal olfaction in rats
• The hidden ways your tongue tastes
• Understanding the chemistry and evolution of chocolate flavour
• How the food industry plays a role in hedonic eating habits
• The chemistry of wine flavour
• Aroma compounds in wine
• The extraordinary science of junk food

In addition, we strongly recommend SMELLOSOPHY by A. S. Barwich

What exactly is the craft chocolate process? Anyone who has been to one of our virtual tastings will have been subjected to an explanation using the analogous difference between roast chicken and chicken nuggets.

We use the comparison to try and highlight the difference between mass-produced chocolate and craft chocolate. It’s all about time. And ‘who’ does ‘what’ and ‘when’. And ‘what’ is added (and taken away).

Roasting a chicken takes time. You are the cook. The end result directly reflects the unique combination of ingredient quality, level of care, and time that is taken.

Making chicken nuggets requires the end-user to use a microwave or oven for a short time. But on the other hand, making a chicken nugget requires a LOT of processing, and capital equipment, at the factory. An awful lot is added. And much is taken away. It’s an efficiency game which is all about consistency, cost, and getting people hooked.

Time and Craft Chocolate

To craft chocolate, time and care are key. You first have to sort the beans; think a few hours per 50kg sack. Then you have to roast (and sometimes pre-roast); think 20-30 mins in most cases, but realise that the time at different heats is key here to account for different bean sizes and types. Then the roasted beans have to be cracked and winnowed (removing the shells from the roasted beans); think 1-2 hours per batch, and depending on the winnower (which could even be a hair dryer…) lots of broken nails. Then grinding and conching; which can be anywhere from 10 to 200 hours. Then, many chocolate makers will let their chocolate ‘rest’ before tempering and moulding into bars (some will rest for weeks if not months). All this requires time. It’s all about coaxing flavour from the beans. And that takes time.

Efficiency and Mass-Produced Chocolate

By contrast, mass-produced chocolate can see a bean turned into a bar in a few hours. It uses a completely different approach. Time is (literally) money: The faster, and more efficient, the better. Flavour, taste, and texture are all added later. The machines have to be kept running and utilised. Hence, the problem with “mass balance Fair Trade” bars: the beans in these Fair Trade bars may not be themselves “Fair Trade” as this would require the machines to be stopped, cleaned, changed over, etc. So there is an exemption allowed and beans are “balanced out”.

Indeed, the very roasting approach of mass-produced bars is completely different to craft makers’ roasting. Instead of first roasting the beans, and then removing the shells, most mass-produced chocolate bars reverse the process. Beans are steamed, shells removed, and the nibs are roasted. This is more efficient (yields go up by 3-5%). But it doesn’t optimise flavour. Think freeze-dried coffee versus freshly roasted, and then ground, coffee beans. Faster and more efficient. But not the same flavour.

Next, mass-produced chocolate uses high pressures and massive grinders to turn the roasted nibs into chocolate liquor. And then they temper and mould. It’s fast, it’s efficient, it’s MASSIVE. Craft chocolate is in batches of between 10-500kgs. Mass-produced chocolate starts with batches of 2,500kgs and goes to hundreds of thousand kilos/tonnes per batch. However, to put it mildly, this is not great for flavour. But that’s what additives are for!

Also, very often mass-produced chocolate will remove the cocoa butter and replace it with other ingredients. Why? These other ingredients are far cheaper. Palm oil, vegetable fat and PGPR are a lot cheaper than cocoa butter. Sugar is even cheaper than cocoa powder (cocoa butter’s desiccated by-product). And sugar is VERY addictive.

Read the Label

It’s so important to turn the bar over and look at the ingredients. Sugar should NEVER be the first ingredient. And follow Michael Pollan’s advice: “Only eat ingredients your grandmother would recognise”.

But it’s not always that easy. Labels can be confusing. Different countries have different requirements (e.g. in the UK and US you can list cocoa beans as an ingredient, but in Germany, you have to say cocoa liquor). And we can debate the merits of vanilla as an ingredient for a long time (quick answer: vanilla is great for milk chocolate; whereas in dark chocolate it’s generally not a great sign of bean quality. And vanillin should always be a flashing red warning light).

And there is an interesting additional ‘tell’. Mass-produced chocolate will hardly ever detail location: who makes their chocolate? Where are their beans grown? Indeed, ‘big chocolate’ is even exempt from normal EU regulations here; they argue that they can’t answer these questions as their chocolate derives from a huge variety of places. Couverture (a type of semi-finished chocolate) is roasted and initially ground in one place, before being sold to a ‘chocolate maker’ to temper and mould on a completely different continent.

What is ‘Belgian’ chocolate?

Couverture shows how complex (and ironic) terms like ‘Belgian’ can be. One of the reasons we associate Belgium with chocolate is that in the 1920s Oskar Callebaut created couverture in his Belgian factory, thereby alleviating the need for other chocolate makers to make their own chocolate. And then a generation later (in the 1960s) Callebault started to export this couverture, putting Belgium firmly on the chocolate map.

Today, Belgium no longer processes much of this ‘Belgian’ couverture. After merging with the French company, Cocoa Barry in 1996 and listing its shares in Switzerland, Callebaut isn’t technically Belgian anyway. But under EU (and UK) regulations, this couverture can still be labelled “Belgian” as the term is not protected.

Bottom line: read the back of a bar carefully. Check the ingredients. Check where the beans are from. And check where, how, and by whom the bar has been crafted (as opposed to ‘processed‘).

Some Bars to Savour

To appreciate the ways different applications of times and approaches can enhance the complexities of flavour in craft chocolate, see the series of pairings we’ve assembled for you (with a small saving on each):

• Same beans, same maker, different roasts: Conexión‘s Ecuadorean beans,
• Same beans, same maker, different roasts and conches: Fresco and Nicaraguan beans,
• Same beans, different makers with different applications of time and different processes on Åkesson’s Madagascan beans (Bonnat, Bare Bones and Fruition), Beni beans from Bolivia (Fruition and Oialla) and Kokoa Kamili beans from Tanzania (Omnom and Fjak).

Time is an important factor in craft chocolate. For consumers it’s about ‘taking your time’ to savour. For makers, time is; in the words of Jenny Linford; the “missing ingredient” (and again, we wholeheartedly recommend her book on this, see here and below).

Humans’ Unique Second Sense of Smell and Flavour

We humans are unique in being able to detect flavour through both our noses and our mouths. Other animals; cats, dogs, etc.; can detect flavour by sniffing, but once they have something in their mouths they can’t detect its flavours. This explains why, for example, dogs ‘wolf’ down their food but humans (should) savour. Indeed it may well be that this unique human skill of savouring food in our mouths (technically called retronasal olfaction) is what gave rise to cooking and, arguably, civilisation.

Craft chocolate is all about length and depth of flavour. It is designed to be savoured. By contrast, mass produced confectionery is designed to be scoffed. It’s about the sugar hit and ‘bliss point‘ (come to a virtual tasting, for more on this).

The Complexity of Flavour

Our ability to detect the flavours of, and savour, craft chocolate is remarkably complex. Indeed, it was only in 1991 that the basic mechanics of our olfactory system were worked out, winning Linda Buck and Richard Axel a Nobel Prize for their pioneering work. Detecting flavour is a skill; the more you practise the better flavour-detective you become and the whole process subsequently becomes more fun as you appreciate the complexity of flavour profiles more and more. And it’s definitely worth savouring, and comparing notes, with other people. Often they will pick out other flavour notes and dimensions that you may not have initially identified, but after they’ve shared their insights you too can start to savour these notes.

This is one of the great advantages of virtual tastings where we encourage everyone, in real time, to share their (anonymous) impressions (see here for an example). And, as our tastings with Simon Rimmer and Steve Tapril on gin and with Ida and Rebecca of Corney & Barrow on wine show, this approach works well for gin and wine as well as craft chocolate.

The Flavour Wave

It’s also interesting to note the changing sensations, textures and flavours as you savour your craft chocolate. Detecting flavours is not like, for example, looking at a picture or photo and being immediately able to observe lots of different colours, features and dimensions. Even expert wine tasters, coffee graders and perfume ‘noses’ struggle to identify more than 3-5 flavour notes at any one moment (this is called the Laing limit after work done by David Laing in the late 1980s).

However what you can do is detect different flavours (and tastes and textures) over time. So given the amazing differences that evolve as you savour craft chocolate, it really helps to think of a journey or flavour wave (indeed the same is true for wine, coffee and perfume). See here for the Flavour Wave we developed with Professor Barry Smith, James Hoffmann and Rebecca Palmer. And it’s this we use in all our virtual tastings, enjoying the flavours and sensations as they merge across one another and evolve, using the magic of time to savour and enjoy.

In the world of craft chocolate, the subject of adding nuts and other ‘inclusions‘ to the cocoa bean is heated and vexed. Purists insist on minimal ingredients. They sniff at the idea of flavour combinations, “additions” and the likes of “fruit and nuts”. At the same time, most craft chocolate aficionados have their ‘guilty secrets’ and appreciate the amazing pairings craft chocolate with inclusions can achieve. 

We think that there is room for both types of craft chocolate lovers. But we think that this debate opens up a more important issue:

Is the bar about “using but obscuring” the cocoa bean? (i.e. mass-produced chocolate)…

Or is it about “revealing and celebrating” the cocoa bean? (i.e. craft chocolate)…

To phrase the question in another way:

Is the aim to use chocolate as a vector for flavouring, or is it about showcasing how chocolate offers an unparalleled variety of flavours, textures, tastes, mouthfeel, and offers awesome pairings?

Mass-Produced Chocolate…

Mass-produced chocolate is all about cost, consistency and immediate satisfaction. To that end, it’s all about achieving the same flavour, melt, mouthfeel and texture bar after bar, year after year, for the lowest possible price. Hence the uproar whenever there is a rumour of a change to the formula or format of any mass-produced bar, egg, or whatever.

And one way to achieve consistency and low cost is through additives and flavourings. These additives and flavourings also create ‘moreishness‘ (hence why mass produced chocolate bar packaging isn’t designed to be resealed; they expect the whole bar to be eaten in one go, and hence why they have so much sugar, additives, etc.).

…versus Craft Chocolate 

By contrast craft chocolate is all about showcasing the myriad variety of flavours, tastes and textures that can be coaxed from fine flavour cocoa beans. Different fermentations, vintages, roasts, batches and the like are celebrated for their distinctiveness. And when you savour craft chocolate bars, there is a wave of aromas and flavours that develop from the cocoa bean. To adapt a famous UK adline “I can’t believe it’s not FLAVOURED”; great craft chocolate bars have so much flavour that one thinks that something other than cocoa beans has been added. Please see the following bars where you will look twice at the label as they really do exhibit more flavours than you’d expect from “merely” a cocoa bean:

Look for aniseed and liquourice notes in the Utopick bar, strawberries and raspberries in the Qantu bar, and lemon and lime in the Fruition bar.

1+1 = >2

We love these single-estate craft chocolate bars. Indeed they are what our monthly subscription is all about. But there is more.

To be pedantic, even in a two-ingredient craft bar, there is an inclusion (sugar). The addition of a “touch of sugar” to a craft chocolate bar helps bring out the flavour, develop the mouthfeel and remove astringency and bitterness.

And even purists will accept the addition of some cocoa nibs (technically a fruit) to add texture, crunch and astringency (see the following great examples from Taucherli, Menakao, Askinosie, and Feitoria do Cacao). Plus for over 100 years, thanks to the pioneering work of Swiss chocolate enthusiast Daniel Peter, we’ve been enjoying milk chocolate bars because he worked out how to add milk to a bar, and use milk’s creaminess to sweeten and add roundness to a bar’s mouthfeel.

Above and beyond this there are a number of pairings and inclusions which showcase the genius and heritage of many craft chocolate makers. Here are a few favourites (this is just the tip of the iceberg of amazing inclusion bars):

Fossa’s honey orchid dancong hongcha bar showcases Singapore’s culinary heritage. Have this bar instead of desert (or in addition!).

Pump Street’s signature sour dough and sea salt pays tribute to their baking heritage and seaside location.

The pepper in Åkesson’s black pepper bar is grown alongside the cocoa to offer it shade and prevent it from becoming “sunburnt”. It also makes this bar an awesome pairing for red wine.

And finally, it’s hard to get more Norwegian than reindeer moss; see Fjåk’s Lingonberry and Reindeer moss.