More QRW Spring 2008 feature articles:

Dark Victory

QRW’s annual chocolate tasting pinpoints
six scrumptious specimens.

QRW Staff

January 20, which tradition says is the coldest night of the year, is a two-fold experience. It’s the time virgins have visions of their lovers; and it’s the time associated with sweets and other delicacies, of which lovers partake, as they do in Keats’ “The Eve of St. Agnes,” ensuring an evening of epic erotica. We can’t help with the first part of this tradition, but we can with the second, and to that end we had the second Annual Blind Dark Chocolate Eve of St. Agnes tasting.

While the tasting offered few surprises, it offered some rich dark chocolate experiences, explaining why lovers of the cacao bean see it as theobroma (food of the gods). We collected 15 dark chocolate samples, cut them evenly into one inch squares, served them on small individually numbered saucers, and tasted. As with wine, a dark chocolate tasting requires concentration and memory. The panel dealt with aromas, tasted for flavors, and concentrated on texture and finish. We cleared our palates with sparkling water after each sample. (Sparkling water, we found, clears the palate faster and cleaner.) Nearly all the dark chocolate in the market we tasted is very good, some spectacular, like Paris and Amedei. Dark chocolate has become the darling of the healthy and wealthy, and the snob appeal that has emerged around the product is not unlike that of fine wine and, frankly, not a little amusing. Nonetheless, dark chocolate is in another orbit compared to most milk chocolates we know as adults. It’s an indulgence worth pursuing.

The Tasting

As we do at our wine tastings, we pre-taste. We tasted this time only those dark chocolate with 70% or more cacao content, which makes for richer and deeper dark chocolate. In this case, we pre-tasted 15 dark chocolate samples and narrowed that list to a final six. All the dark chocolates are available at most retail stores, like Whole Foods, Bloomingdale’s, and Nieman Marcus. Admittedly, they are not always easy to find.

The results. We offer The Best of Show first, and the rest — all excellent — are alphabetically listed.