Chocolate Tasting

On Saturday night we had our good friends Sarah and Andy over and we had a chocolate tasting party. We had six varieties--a Dagoba, a Ghirardelli, a Theo, a Caffarelle, a Lindt, and a World Market brand.

To rank the chocolates, we did a blind taste test. We arranged them in order from dark to light (Sarah says this is the way it's done, and it seems very reasonable--start with the darkest, bitterest stuff, and that way you don't get sweetened out by the very first bite you eat!). Between bars we had lemon sorbet to cleanse our pallets.

We were happily surprised at the result--We almost unanimously (three out of four) agreed that the relatively inexpensive World Market brand chocolate was the best! It was delicous--42% cacao--and we described the taste as buttery and almost toffee-flavored. We were surprised that an American chocolate was so delicious! It turned out the near-unanimous worst chocolate was the Caffarelle--Italian. We would have expected the Italians to do better.

The others were very nice as well. I enjoyed the Lindt for its wonderful texture. The Theo was the only true dark chocolate, and it was great; all the cocoa beans were grown in the Ivory Coast. I thought the chocolate had an almost peppery flavor. It was a bit bitter, but had that wonderful fruity kind of aftertaste that we love in good dark chocolates.

What a great evening!