Chocolate Wheel To Be a Taster’s Tool

OK, some days even I can’t believe how much fun I have.  I spent two hours tasting an assortment of chocolate bars.  Mont Blanc is developing a chocolate wheel that will incorporate a common vocabulary of flavors that will allow us to better communicate the subtleties and nuances of what we taste.  The staff tasted six bars, five dark chocolate and one milk chocolate.

For consistency, all of the dark chocolates were premium, meaning that they had at least 59 percent chocolate liquor. The bars we used had between 59 and 80 percent chocolate liquor.  Obviously, the amount of chocolate in each bar varied, but that also allowed us to better discern the different flavors.

One bar, for example, had a very smoky, leathery, almost tobacco flavor.  Another one initially had a very astringent, metallic flavor, but that mellowed to include notes of cherry and raisin. The milk chocolate bar had a pronounced dairy note, as you would expect, but also had flavors of vanilla, caramelized sugar, and even hints of lavender.

This was the first of what will be a number of tastings. When finished, the results will be used to produce a chocolate wheel that should help people better understand the nuances and differences in chocolate.