This Tasting box is for a Cheese and Chocolate Tasting and Master Class with Bronwen Percival of Neals Yard and Spencer Hyman on 28th September at 8-00pm via Zoom.

​​Throughout this session we will explore how different farmers’ and makers’ methods can create sharply distinctive flavours, tastes, textures and levels of astringency in both cheese and chocolate. Our exploration will be carried out as follows:

We will kick off by showing you how to taste chocolate (it’s a little different to how you “taste” other products as the “snap” is super important). It’s also worth considering how the tastes, flavours, and textures evolve over the time – as the same is true of cheese! We’ll use a Willie’s Venezuelan taster bar to explore this.

Then we will showcase how fermentation of the cocoa beans makes a difference to flavour by comparing two bars from Mikkel Friis Holm who has asked his farmers to ferment his beans for 5 days, but turn one batch twice (ie aerate twice) and the other batch three times –  you’ll be amazed by the difference this makes!

Then we will try the same bean from Bertil Akesson in Madagascar, same harvest, estate, fermentation etc. but the roasting, grinding and conching processes will create differences in flavour and mouthfeel.

Finally, we will explore how sugar impacts flavour and astringency by comparing one of Bertil’s 100% bars against his 75%.

For the cheeses, please visit the Neal’s Yard Dairy website.

You can register for this session (and others) on our events calendar page.