Chocolate Tasting

The same company who hosted the Tea Tasting Class that I attended last month (Summit Spice & Tea) put on a Chocolate Tasting this time – so of course I had to go. They also have an Oil Tasting Class, if anybody is interested.

This time the café was set up in a more intimate way, with the 3 tables separated out so that eight people could sit together as if for dinner. The places were laid out with a glass of water, a cup for tea, and a piece of paper with a grid of 15 squares (5 across and 5 down.) Each square had a little chunk of chocolate placed on it, and a separate paper listed the information for each piece identified by its corresponding number from the grid.

As before, the class began with the instructors giving the basic information on Chocolate: where it came from, how it’s grown & made, some history of its use, things like that. After fielding a few questions from the group, we got to the important part of actually tasting our chocolate.

The first two were each 60% Dark; a Trinitario chocolate from the Caribbean and a Criollo chocolate from the Dominican Republic.

These were followed by a 64% Dark from Costa Rica, a 66% Dark from Bolivia, a 68% Dark from Oregon, and a 70% Dark from Honduras.

Then we had three 72% Darks, from Tanzania, Cuba, and France – followed by two at 75%, one from Madagascar and the other from San Francisco.

Getting darker now, we got to the 80% and 85% ones from the Dominican Republic and Ecuador respectively.

We ended our gastronomic chocolate tour with a 100% Dark that is typically used for baking, just to give us a taste of the pure product with no additives.  

As with the last class, I received a 15% off coupon and was able to purchase 4 of my favorites: a 60% bar, a 70% bar and two different 75% bars.