A chocolate tasting in Cleveland

[Fat Guy]

At this year's member-organized Heartland gathering, several of us spent the afternoon participating in three chocolate-related events. Tammylc (aka Tammy Coxen), who runs a chocolate business in Ann Arbor (her website is here), was kind enough to lead a chocolate tasting, followed by a chocolate-and-wine tasting, followed by a truffle-making demonstration. I was present for the first two, but was only able to catch parts of the third, so I'll report only on the tastings.

For the chocolate tasting, Tammy led us through tasting eight chocolate samples in ascending order of chocolate percentage. She explained about various attributes to focus on (snap, mouthfeel) and also noted that cocoa percentage is not a totally clear measure of chocolate-ness since that percentage can be made up of varying ratios of cocoa butter to cocoa.

The chocolates we sampled were:

1. Scharffen Berger, Blend, 62%

2. Vintage Plantations, Ecuador, 65%

3. Valrhona “Manjari” Madagascar 64%

4. Michel Cluizel “Mangaro” Madagascar 65%

5. Michel Cluizel “Maralumi” Papau-New Guinea 64%

6. Michel Cluizel “Concepcion” Venezula 66%

7. Michel Cluizel “Tamarina” Sao Tome 70%

8. Pralus Indonesie 75%

It was interesting to see the varied reactions to some of the chocolates, especially at the higher percentages. Pralus, a controversial brand because Francois Pralus is fond of very heavy roasting of beans, was my favorite, and also one of the only chocolates that a significant number of tasters hated. There was also a chocolate that tasted like broccoli and asparagus, I believe the Michel Cluizel from Sao Tome, and I thought it was just awful -- yet several tasters loved it.

Tammy gave out sheets with grids for tasting notes, and spoke throughout about various aspects of chocolate. It was fascinating to taste so many interesting chocolates all together. I wish we'd had a Hershey bar in the mix just for a baseline.

Next, those who participated in the wine tasting circled back and tasted all of the above with the following four wines:

1. Quady Elysium California Black Muscat

2. Warres Optima 10 yr Tawny Port

3. 2001 Clos de Paulilles Banyuls Rimage

4. Mas Amiel Maury 6 ans d'age Vin Doux Natural

I've heard many wine professionals say that pairing wine with chocolate at all is a waste of wine, chocolate and time, but I thought some of the pairings raised strong challenges to that attitude. What I did come away thinking is that pairing Port and Banyuls -- the traditional preferences -- with chocolate is not necessarily a great idea. At the same time, the Quady black muscat, when paired with several of the chocolate samples, did exactly what wine is supposed to do when paired well with food: the wine was delicious, the chocolate was delicious, and when taken together the whole was more delicious than the sum of its parts. The Mas Amiel, as well, really worked for me as a pairing.

It was very kind of Tammy, who works in chocolate professionally, to do these tastings for us at no charge (we only chipped in to pay for the actual chocolate).

Maybe some other folks who were there will have some details to add.