Comparative
technique
You learn faster tasting bars against each other than one at a time. Control one variable, vary another, and differences you'd never notice in isolation jump out.
How to run a flight
A flight is a controlled experiment. Hold one thing constant and vary one thing, so any difference has a single cause.
Pick your variable
Same % across three origins isolates origin. Same origin across three makers isolates craft (roast/conch). Never vary both at once.
Order light to intense
Taste brightest/lowest-% first; strong or high-% bars fatigue the palate and flatten what follows.
Cleanse, don't cleanse too hard
Room-temperature water and a plain cracker reset the palate. Avoid strong flavours between samples.
Go blind when you can
Cover the labels. Score structure first (the instrument), then reveal — expectation quietly rewrites what you "taste."
The % scale & the label
The number on the front is the most misread thing in chocolate. Click each tier:
Then read the back. A serious dark bar often lists just two or three ingredients. Decode the label:
A three-origin flight
Line up three
Three 70% single-origin bars from different countries. Same %, so origin is the only big variable.
Score each on the instrument
Snap, melt, sweetness, bitterness, acidity, astringency — before reading tasting notes on the wrapper.
Rank and explain
Which is brightest? Most bitter? Attribute each difference to origin or roast.
Five questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- Why vary only one thing in a flight?
- In what order do you taste, and why?
- Why taste blind?
- What does % cacao tell you — and not tell you?
- What does a short ingredient list on a dark bar suggest?
Cacao
genetics
Cacao has "grape varieties" too. Four names cover most of what you'll meet on a label — and one of them accounts for the vast majority of the world's crop.
The four you'll see named
Modern genetics counts ten-plus clusters, but four traditional names still do most of the work on labels. Click each:
Roughly, Criollo is the fine, fragile aristocrat; Forastero the hardy workhorse behind most of the world's chocolate; Trinitario the hybrid that keeps some finesse with more resilience; and Nacional the floral Ecuadorian specialty.
Fine-flavour vs bulk
The trade splits cacao into two markets, and the split maps loosely onto genetics:
Fine / flavour cacao
- Criollo, Trinitario, Nacional and select fine Forasteros
- Complex aromatics — fruit, flowers, nuts
- Under ~5% of world production
- Sold on flavour; the world of craft bars
Bulk / ordinary cacao
- Mostly Forastero (incl. the high-yield clone CCN-51)
- Straightforward "chocolatey," less aromatic
- ~95% of world production
- Sold as a commodity by weight (Session 19)
CCN-51 is a disease-resistant, high-yield clone that has rescued many farmers' incomes — but it's widely judged flavour-poor. It's the clearest case of the yield-versus-flavour trade-off that runs through the whole supply chain (Sessions 17, 19).
Five questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- Name the four traditional groups and one trait each.
- Which dominates world production?
- What is Trinitario a cross of?
- What flavour is Nacional famous for?
- What is CCN-51 and why is it controversial?
Fermentation,
drying & terroir
Here's the twist that separates chocolate from wine: for cacao, what happens after harvest often matters more to flavor than where it grew.
Fermentation, step by step
Beans arrive from the pod coated in sweet pulp. What happens over the next week decides whether they'll ever taste of chocolate.
Load
Wet beans and pulp go into wooden boxes or covered heaps, typically for 3–7 days.
Yeasts, then bacteria
Yeasts ferment pulp sugars to alcohol; bacteria convert that to acetic acid. Temperatures climb toward 45–50°C.
The seed dies
Heat and acid kill the germ and break down cell walls, letting enzymes create the flavour precursors that roasting will later develop.
Turn & judge
Beans are turned for evenness. Stop too early → flat, astringent, "raw." Go too far → putrid, hammy off-notes.
Drying, terroir & the maker
After fermentation, beans are dried — usually in the sun over days. Moisture falls and harsh acetic acid off-gasses. Dry too fast and sourness stays locked in; too slow and mould sets in. Only then do beans ship to a maker, who adds roast and conch.
Terroir — soil, climate, shade tree, variety — is real and gives origins their signatures (Sessions 7–8). But unlike wine, processing frequently outweighs site: a great bean badly fermented is ruined, while skilled fermentation and a careful roast can make a humble bean shine. Click the faults to see the tells:
Five questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- Walk through fermentation from load to judge.
- What do the flavour precursors do later?
- What does drying accomplish, and its two failure modes?
- Why does processing often outweigh terroir in cacao?
- Give the tell for under- vs over-fermentation.