Chapter Two: Tasting Methods

“The difference between tasting chocolate and eating chocolate is that tasting chocolate is a constant and deliberate process, one in which you pay attention to every aspect of what you are eating and consciously evaluate the sensations you are experiencing.” - Clay Gordon, Discover Chocolate

Before we begin we want to quickly run through our ever evolving (amateur) tasting method.  We are by no means experts! If you have any suggestions or observations, drop us a comment below. We’d love to hear from you!  

We want to keep the focus on our love of chocolate and don’t want to get caught up using obscure, technical terms that you wouldn’t use on a day to day basis.  As you can probably guess, our end goal is to get chocolate in our mouths and have fun along the way.  While we researched chocolate tasting, we came across Clay Gordon’s book, Discover Chocolate that we found to be interesting and informative.  We’ve adapted his ideas to develop our tasting method.  Particularly helpful was his list of suggested questions to ask yourself while bar hopping. We will be answering a few of the following questions with each review:

How is the chocolate presented?

What does the chocolate look like?

What does the chocolate feel and sound like when it is snapped?

What does the chocolate smell like?

What does the chocolate taste like?

How does the chocolate feel on the tongue and how does it melt?  What other physical sensations does the chocolate cause in your mouth?

What memories does the chocolate evoke?

That’s it! Sweet and simple; we’re ready to start reviewing. Check in next week for our first bar hopping [chocolate] review, where you can finally hear our thoughts on a chocolate bar.