While preparing for the event, I decided that the tasting should be blind so that brand name and price wouldn't influence perception of taste (or at least the assessment of whether one liked something or not). I also thought it would be fun to see where the cheapest bar would rank against finer brands of chocolate and whether any of the group unwittingly had "expensive taste."
The bars we tasted ranged from $1.50 to $6.50 and were a minimum of 70% cocoa. They were:
- Green & Black’s Organic Dark Chocolate with 70% Cocoa
- Divine 70% Dark Chocolate
- Pascha Organic Dark Chocolate 70% Cacao
- Laura Secord Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa
- Jacquot France 74% Dark Chocolate Cacao
- Camino Extra Dark 80% Dark Chocolate
- Lindt Excellence Intense Dark 85% Cacao
I included the Jacquot France because it was available at Dollarama and I was curious. I included the Laura Secord because I wanted to see where a Canadian-made chocolate bar would land in the mix. The Lindt bar was required for the assignment. The other four were selected from the collection I had amassed by visiting local stores, like My Fair Ladies and Bulk Barn, in search of bars that were not typical grocery store finds.
The surprising thing throughout the process of tasting each chocolate was how differently we each perceived it. One bar (the Camino) was variously described as having an aroma that was pungent, tabacco-like, floral, spicy, coffee-like, and rubber-like, while the flavour was described as burnt, bitter, molasses, earthy, fruity, and harsh. Was it all of those things or none of them? I have no answer. Feel free to replicate this experiment yourself and you can decide!
One bar -- the Pascha Organic -- tasted like wine to me (though others described it as raisins, woodsy, earthy, kerosene, harsh, etc). And the flavour lingered long after the chocolate had melted away. Another -- the Green & Black's -- tasted like geraniums to me (while others perceived citrus, molasses, raisin, etc). There was no consensus to be found, at least in terms of the adjectives we were choosing to describe appearance, aroma, texture, and flavour.
In the end, Laura Secord and Jacquot emerged as favourites, though I use the term loosely. They both were the "favourite" of three people (meaning both fell short of a majority, as there were seven tasters).
I've given a great deal of thought to this result and I've come up with two possible (related) explanations for why these two bars came out on top. First, I think they may have a more familiar flavour in comparison to others, by which I mean that I think they have a general, perhaps well-rounded chocolate flavour without strong notes. I also think that the order of tasting impacted our impressions. For example, the Pascha bar -- made from rare criollo beans -- had an intense wine flavour that lingered. Pretty much anything would taste better after that unexpected experience, but something less pungent and more similar to our expectations for chocolate would obviously score higher given the visceral reaction most had to the Pascha bar. As well, to put all of this into context, the majority of people at this tasting prefer milk chocolate to dark.
It's clear from this process that flavour perception is based in personal experience and that comparing chocolate flavours and notes to our experience of other things (like mushrooms, tobacco, or coffee) is subjective and imprecise. I'm left wondering what we would have tasted if we had been told what "experts" have already said about various bars. Would guiding tasters in this way change the associations and outcome? I suspect so, but I have to be honest: I'm not willing to taste most of these bars a second time.
I agree with my participants that next time it should be a milk chocolate tasting!
No comments:
Post a Comment