Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Thanks for this, folks. Will run down today. BTW, small tidbit. It's Grana Padano, not Padana. Looking forward to more feedback on this place.

I apologize for the delay in getting back to you all on these comments, I was in Belize leading a chocolate tour and the Internet connection was down all week.

I wrote what I did in a more simplistic way than I could have, in part because I have been asked to keep my posts to a certain length (my first was way long) and in part because I wanted to be deliberately provocative. Necessarily, there are many things I wanted to say that got tossed into the editorial bit-bucket during the process of editing for length.

Perhaps more to the point is that I expect readers of Serious Eats to be, well, more serious about what they eat and more willing to consider alternate viewpoints that challenge the perceptions they hold about certain foods than a general audience. Readers of Serious Eats are a self-selected group and while mabisa might not expect there to be a linear relationship between cocoa content and chocolate quality, less sophisticated chocolate fans have come to look at 70% as a magic number that defines a minimum level of quality. It is these nouveau pseudo-chocophiles that tend to be the snobs.

It is accurate to say that while there is no consistent relationship between cocoa content and chocolate quality it is possible to generalize that a 72% chocolate is likely to be more bitter than a 60%. Likely: Not necessarily. Like most generalizations, there are exceptions, and there are enough exceptions to make the generalization not useful - for me.

As for my favorites ...

kiseichocolates talks about the 74% chocolate from the DR. This has to be the Hacienda Helvesia from Felchlin and I agree with the assessment about its lack of bitterness and the elegance (I would also add finesse) of the chocolate. If you like dark chocolate this is one of the best currently being made - but it is not widely available unless you are a professional. (If enough of you are interested I can look into getting some.) It is rich and earthy and intense and totally satisfying. The 65% Venezuelan is also from Felchlin, the Maracaibo Clasificado, another superb chocolate.

They are not Felchlin's best, however, a designation I bestow on the 2005 harvest of their Cru Sauvage, a 68% bar made from beans harvested from feral (formerly domesticated and now growing wild (or untended)) trees growing in the Beni region of northeastern Bolivia. This chocolate had a light, airy taste with citrusy notes that was high up in the nose and a texture that I refer to as dissolving rather than melting.

My favorite chocolates are ones that challenge my perception of what tastes and textures in chocolate can be. Because I like varietal and origin chocolates, I tend to shy away from picking a chocolate as my favorite because I know that next year's version is going to taste different. The wine analogy that works for me is to say that you like the style of a particular vineyard (say Clarendon Hill in Australia) because you've tasted a bunch of their wines and have liked what you taste. You'd then point to one or more particular examples, say the 2005 Grenache, that you especially liked. The 2004 you might not have liked as well.

With chocolate, you might say that you like the style of, say, Felchlin, and that you particularly like the Creole a 49% milk chocolate. Or you like the style of Valrhona, but particularly like the Apamakia.

Chocolate works that way for me. I like (among many others) Felchlin, Pralus, and Bonnat so I am willing to try anything they make because I know it will be very well made. For each chocolate maker I have specific favorites. I had a very interesting tasting of bars from Cacao Sampaka (Barcelona) while in Belize and was sufficiently impressed, especially by their 100% Ecuadorean, to add them to the short list of companies whose new work I search out to try.

And yes, it takes eating a lot of chocolate (tough, I know) to reach a point of knowing what you like so that when you taste it in a chocolate you know it instantly.

Finally the addition of soy lecithin is not necessarily an indication of poor quality. Most chocolate manufacturers use it. Lecithin is used to thin out the chocolate to make it easier to mold. One-half per cent lecithin can replace about 3 per cent cocoa butter, so it is also less expensive. Most manufacturers who have stopped using lecithin in their chocolate have done so because it's hard to find lecithin that is certified GMO-free and a surprising number of people are allergic to soy.

If you're running over to the UWS Grandaisy, consider stopping by the new UWS Jacques Torres Chocolate for some hot chocolate. Or something.