It’s been a smidge over a year that I’ve been writing about chocolate and this is what I’ve learned:
1. The chocolate world is full of lovely people, but it can also be bitchier than the world of fashion (in which I worked for more than a decade). I once spent a week visiting chocolatiers and manufacturers, and the arch asides about competitors were astonishing: ‘Well of course, no one really knows where their chocolate comes from.’ ‘It used to be really good, but then they sold.’
2. While the cocoa content of chocolate is an important introduction, various other factors are more of an indication of taste, such as where and how the bean was grown (the terroir, much like grapes and wine) and how it was treated afterwards – things like fermentation (yes, chocolate is a fermented food!), roasting, ageing. So getting to know your beans is wise.
3. I hate 100% cocoa unless it’s from Firetree (£7, 65g), which is, to also quote a top chocolatier, ‘The only edible 100%.’
4. My absolute preference is a dark milk around 55%, not a 70% or over. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.
5. If there’s a creamier, smoother, dark milk than Original Beans’ 55% Femmes de Virunga (70g, £4, the beans are from Congo) I’ve yet to find it. Honestly, if you think Galaxy is as good as it gets you’ll get your mind blown eating this.
6. You really can live with 50 bars of chocolate in your office and not eat them all. However, you will weigh more than you did when you started this gig.
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Post time: Jun-09-2020