Pro Chefs Blind Taste Test Every Dark Chocolate Bar

[Narrator] We've gathered three professional chocolatiers

and chocolate makers to blind taste test

every dark chocolate bar we could get our hands on,

to see which ones meet their standards.

[classical music]

[wrapper tears]

Ghirardelli, intense dark, 86% cacao

First look is not well tempered.

It should be a little shinier.

It looks like it's wrapped really well,

'cause I'm seeing pretty intact corners.

Whoever made this knows what they're doing.

[chocolate snaps]

[chuckles] You heard that?

So one of the main things I'm looking for

in a quality chocolate right off the bat

is the snap in the chocolate.

That snap's gonna mean that it was emulsified well,

that the temper is strong.

It indicates that there are no other fats

besides cocoa butter.

What the tempering does, it allows to be shiny,

it allows to get hard.

Tempering is the process

of aligning the polymorphic crystals

in both sugar and the cocoa butter.

So if you see a chocolate bar that has streaks,

it's either come out of temper or it wasn't tempered well.

It should look pretty clear like this.

What I'm looking for is the chocolate to be smooth.

Because when it's grainy it just divides in your palate,

you don't really get to taste the quality of the chocolate.

Bad texture will give you a bad mouth feel,

which will ruin the experience of the chocolate.

Smoothness in a chocolate indicates

that it's been well emulsified, that the temper is strong,

that there hasn't been any defects in transit.

I do want that strength of the cacao flavor,

some level of bitterness, some level of sweetness.

But I am looking for a balance.

I don't want to eat a cleaning product.

Every ingredient needs to have their own room.

I'm just pushing this to the roof of my mouth,

allowing my body temperature

to really melt the chocolate down.

Don't chew.

And I'm the greediest of the greedy.

The texture of this chocolate is incredibly smooth.

There are some acidic notes, there are some bitter notes.

It has some acidity, it has bitterness.

It's a combination of different beans.

It's not really single origin.

And a single origin means that all of the beans

in that chocolate come from one place.

So you can pick up on all the notes there.

It's melting kind of fast,

which does tell me that there's maybe some fats in here

that aren't cocoa butter.

I'm not getting any crumbliness to it.

And look, the warmth of my fingers has created

this blooming effect.

It looks like ash,

but it's really that cocoa butter that melted.

One of the things that's really sort of sexy

about chocolate is that it melts at the human body temp.

So it should take a little while for the chocolate to melt.

This chocolate's pretty well-tempered.

It's a pretty boring middle of the road chocolate.

It's a good commercial.

I'm not completely wowed by the cacao content.

I feel it's 80%.

Ghirardelli is 86%.

86.

So the percentage here is an indication

of how much cocoa is in the bar.

And that could be a mix of cocoa beans and cocoa butter.

And the extra 14% is most likely sugar.

Could be other fillers, vegetable oils, milk powders,

stuff like that.

Chocolate has to be above 35% cocoa

in order for it to be labeled as dark chocolate.

There's no really regulation on what else that 45 or 30

or 15% can be.

And it's actually pretty mild for being 86%.

But if you're looking for the health benefits

of a super dark chocolate, this probably has them.

Dark chocolate has a lot of health benefits.

Primary one being that it's high in polyphenols.

It's the same type of antioxidants that are in berries.

Milk fat in a dark, it's kind of crazy,

But that milk fat is what's making it melt faster.

How is it an intense dark with the milk fat in it?

[Narrator] Cadbury, royal dark chocolate.

The snap was not as strong.

A pretty dull snap.

I'm concerned with the percentage of cacao in there.

And then I can also see a little bit of grit here

in the side.

It might be an indication of higher percentage of milk fat.

It's a little waxy.

Cocoa butter is more expensive than vegetable oil.

Sometimes companies tend to add some vegetable oil

to make it less expensive.

Sometimes you might get a waxy texture.

There's definitely a lot of milk powder in this.

It's a milk chocolate.

I don't even taste the flavor of the cacao.

I don't think they listed the number of percentage.

Okay, I can taste sugar.

I feel like I just ate a Jolly Rancher.

Slight fruitiness, like a raisiny kind of flavor.

Anytime you get perceivable notes of fruit or nuts,

it could be the fermentation of the cocoa beans,

it could be the roasting of the cocoa beans.

That could be a process called conching,

which is used to aerate the chocolate

and drive off acidity and volatile chemicals.

My guess is,

some of all of those three things are at play here

to give it this round flavor.

It is smooth.

Cadbury.

This is the Cadbury royal dark.

[censor beep] Cadbury.

It also tastes like the little eggs.

They not calling this dark.

See, there's no percentage in this.

I knew it.

Which means it's probably right at the line

for being able to be called dark chocolate.

So they want the benefits of calling it dark chocolate

without telling you just how dark it is.

Sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter.

[Chocolatier] Milk fat yet again.

Natural and artificial flavors.

So the ingredient that's used

the most will be listed first.

In this case, sugar is listed first.

If you're looking for the benefits of a dark chocolate,

you really want chocolate or cocoa beans

or cocoa liquor to be listed first.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Hershey's special dark.

So this chocolate has a few air bubbles on it.

Which means that when they were molding the chocolate,

maybe they didn't vibrate it enough.

So when you're pouring the chocolate,

you wanna vibrate the molds to make sure that the chocolate

is smoothly laid in the mold, that it's even,

and to remove any air bubbles

that might be caused from the molding process.

Let's see how this one snaps.

Oh, almost no snap at all.

Fell apart like a cheap soup.

Lots of sugar.

Really, really sweet.

I'm not getting a lot of cocoa flavor at all.

This is a Hershey bar.

So this definitely tastes mass produced to me.

I don't taste any perceivable notes from the cocoa,

which means that what they're probably trying to do

is mask the flavor of the cocoa.

If you have a good flavor bean,

you don't need to add so much sugar,

because you don't wanna overshadow the natural ingredients

of the bean.

It's like some type of fake vanilla

that companies use sometime.

Three for three. [laughs]

Special dark mildly sweet.

Mildly sweet?

How much I spend on this one?

[Chocolatier] Sugar as a first ingredient.

This also has cocoa process with alkali.

If it is a really bad cacao bean,

it's going to be very, very bitter.

They use the alkalization to take that bitterness out

and add sugar.

PGPR is also in this.

[Producer] What is that?

God help us, I don't know, but it's in me right now.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Chocolove, 65% cacao rich dark chocolate.

[chocolate snaps]

This had a good snap.

An audible snap to it.

It is sort of crumbling a little bit,

and I did notice maybe the slightest bit of bloom.

A lot of times with chocolate,

you can pick out two different types of white marks on it,

and those white marks come from something called bloom.

First bloom is what's known as sugar bloom.

That generally happens when the chocolate is processed

or stored in a high humid environment.

The sugar crystals in chocolate will take on moisture

and start to separate from the rest of the ingredients

in the chocolate.

The second kind of bloom is what's called fat bloom,

and that's when the cocoa butter comes out of temper

from the rest of the chocolate.

If it bloom,

you are not gonna taste that refined flavor.

Sugar bloom isn't really gonna affect the texture.

Fat bloom from melted cocoa butter

is definitely gonna affect the texture.

It's gonna make it crumbly, it's gonna make it sort of like,

like you have to chew through it.

The smoothness is there.

A little bit of cocoa flavor, some fig, some raisin.

I like the acidity.

This has a higher cal content

than whatever those things ahead before.

60%.

Definitely still pretty sweet.

We could be tasting that from the, some of the sugar bloom.

There's some level of thought.

It's pleasant, yes.

It's definitely a blend.

This is not single origin by any stretch.

From shape alone, I would say Chocolove.

Oh, this one.

And yes it is, baby.

So the odor is good.

The first ingredient is cocoa liquor.

Cocoa liquor is one part of the bean,

cocoa butter is the other part.

So both together make chocolate.

If you need something real quick

to satisfy the chocolate craving, these are my go-to.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Chocolove, 88% cacao extreme dark chocolate.

Let's see how this one snaps.

[chocolate snaps]

That snap was up.

[Chocolatier] This one looks really smooth.

The color itself is a much deeper, darker color.

That one's really smooth, almost too smooth.

It's just like sliding down my palate.

It melts well, it's tempered, it's not bloom.

There's more of an intense roast on this.

It's just a little bitter.

When people are like, Oh, I don't like dark chocolate.

It's bitter, they're kind of talking about this chocolate.

I would say probably in the 80 range for this.

Extreme dark chocolate, 88%.

That's really high cocoa percentage.

I would take 88 on a day where at least four people

or more have pissed me off.

This is what I'll partake in

to stop me from busting everybody ass.

[Narrator] Trader Joe's, 72% cacao dark chocolate.

[chocolate snaps]

That's promising.

All right, snappy.

The sound is well-tempered.

This is good.

This is a good one.

Smoothness is there.

Nothing wrong with the temper here.

Really well-tempered product.

I'm getting the cacao flavor.

It's about 70%.

I have an aftertaste of coconut.

Maybe this plant grows where all the coconuts plants are.

Cacao and chocolate itself tends to absorb

everything around in its environment.

Even when you put a box of chocolate in your refrigerator,

and it's gonna absorb all these aromas.

There's maybe a little bit of nuttiness in the cocoa,

but it's sort of being overpowered

from over roasting the cocoa beans.

The roasting helps caramelize the natural sugars

in the chocolate

to give it sort of that fudgy characteristic

that we associate with chocolate.

It also can sort of neutralize some off flavors.

So, I'm guessing that this chocolate is maybe over roasted

because it wasn't super high quality cocoa.

This is Trader Joe's, 72% cacao chocolate bar.

Imported from Belgium.

Lemme tell you something, me and TJ,

yo, he be coming through for me, okay.

Apparently this is a dollar.

And it's an amazing quality.

They wanna make it affordable to the public.

And it says imported from Belgium.

Okay, I'm gonna tell you a little bit of story.

When cacao went to Spain, it was only consumed as a drink.

So the Swiss are the ones that found the technology

on the tempering of the chocolate and become harder.

Then the Belgium learned from the Swiss

to make this chocolate, especially the milk chocolate.

To temper chocolate at home,

you wanna melt down the chocolate above 120 degrees.

Let it cool.

When it gets to about 90 degrees,

you want to take a piece of chocolate

that doesn't have bloom.

A small piece, like a piece about this size.

You wanna drop that in the chocolate, keep stirring it.

The reason you have to put another piece of chocolate

is to seed the chocolate.

You're basically showing the polymorphic crystals

in chocolate how to be properly tempered.

It's like sort of crazy sounding,

but that's literally what you're doing.

You're slowly melting the seed,

and that seed is bonding with the other crystals

to show them how to be perfectly tempered chocolate.

[wrapper tears]

Lindt Excellence, 90% cacao dark chocolate.

All right, hold on.

Feel like we getting classy.

Very dark.

I think this is gonna have good snap.

[chocolate snaps]

Yep.

That's a snap.

Okay, you see this is bloom.

It has the whiteish grayish film.

The fat is coming out.

[Chocolatier] To me, indicates that this was stored

in a high moisture environment, maybe in a refrigerator.

Very smooth.

It has that really prominent cocoa flavor.

[Chocolatier] It's bitter.

Small amount of fruitiness.

It's too high for me.

This is too high.

It's probably in the 90s, like 95.

This is warm, it's cinnamon.

Very, very earthy.

This is a West African chocolate.

Forastero, definitely.

[Chocolatier] A lot of the times the fudginess

that you're tasting in chocolate,

that is uniquely West African.

The red fruits,

a lot of those tropical flavors are South American.

There are three types of beans.

The criollo, which is the wild,

this is the origin of the cacao.

Most of Africa grows forastero.

From the criollo and forastero,

they created the trinitarios.

Because the criollo is a very delicate plant.

So even with this bloom on here,

the smoothness of this chocolate definitely confirms to me

that this in sort of the early stages of sugar bloom,

isn't really gonna affect the texture.

90%.

Deliciously intense, surprisingly balanced.

This chocolate lists chocolate, cocoa butter,

and cocoa powder.

My guess is, they want a really strong chocolate flavor,

but they want the added fat of the cocoa butter

to help it melt.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Lindt Excellence, 70% cacao dark chocolate.

This color is not as dark as the last one,

so the cacao content is clearly lower.

Could be from the cocoa beans.

Grown in different areas,

are gonna have different color to them.

Anywhere from a light tan, to a purple color,

to like a deep dark color.

[chocolate snaps]

Snap is good.

The smoothness is good, the snap was good.

It's giving some milk though.

The taste is nice.

It's a balance between bitterness and fruit.

It feels very smooth in my mouth.

It could be between 65 to 70.

Lindt.

[Chocolatier] Oh, it's Lindt again.

70. [laughs]

This has vanilla beans in it.

That was the flavor.

Bourbon vanilla beans.

It's giving me that milky flavor.

And it has soy lecithin.

Soy lecithin is an emulsifier that helps keep the sugar

and the fat bonded in the tempering process.

This is something that I would buy if I'm away and I'm,

I don't have access to my own chocolate.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Tony's Chocolonely, 70% dark chocolate.

[Chocolatier] This is a very thick.

What the hell?

But lemme see if I can give this a snap.

[chocolate snaps]

Okay, it's a pretty good snap.

The person who made this is unhinged.

Because you want people to break their front teeth.

[woman gasps]

I still have teeth.

Mm, I don't like it.

Still that middle of the road fruit flavor.

Brazen, prune, dried fruits for sure.

The texture is not there, it's grainy.

[Chocolatier] It's a good cocoa content.

It's a pretty good melt, considering how thick the bar is.

Feels like it was refined really well, conched really well.

The process of conching is twofold.

One, it's to massage the cocoa particles

after they've been refined.

The other reason for conching

is to drive off acidity through oxidation.

Is this crazy ass Tony's Chocolonely?

Boom.

[chuckles] This is Tony's Chocolonely 70% dark chocolate.

Oh, the sugar's also fair trade.

All right, I see y'all, y'all doing y'all thing.

I know that they're really, really committed

to ending the exploitation in cacao.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Great Value 50% dark chocolate.

Good temper.

That's like a medium snap.

It's not a clean break.

Might be an indication of some other kind of fat,

besides cocoa.

It tastes very chemical.

Lots of sugar.

What is this?

Tastes almost banana.

I can tell that it's not an expensive chocolate.

It's smooth.

It's super sweet.

High vanilla content.

The more commercial brands tend

to always really center vanilla to kind of hide the fact

that my beans are cheap.

I wouldn't eat this for fun.

[Chocolatier] Great Value.

Huh, this is Walmart?

I'm actually kind of surprised.

This is better than a lot of the other ones

that we've tried,

and I'm guessing this one's also pretty cheap.

50%, calling it a dark chocolate,

Barely.

Natural vanilla flavor.

When there is too much sugar

and the combination of vanilla,

it tends to have an effect in flavor,

that it almost tastes like chemicals.

You're buying chocolate on a budget.

This one's not that bad.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Better Goods, 85% dark chocolate.

Nice snap.

It's a good flavor.

This one melts a little bit faster than I was expecting,

given the snap.

When you put it in your mouth it starts melting by pieces.

In my opinion, it is about the conching and the tempering.

In the conching, you're going to put your soy lecithin,

your sugar,

and it starts grinding and grinding and grinding.

And that is what's going to make it very smooth,

very emulsified, very together.

And this is why you do the tempering,

because you wanna keep those properties together.

This one for me is not bad.

It just sort of falls flat in terms of complexity.

It's pretty balanced, it has a pleasant aftertaste,

but there's nothing that's really sort of jumping out to me

in terms of discernible extraordinary flavors.

Better Goods.

[Chocolatier] 85% dark chocolate.

It's well balanced for an 85% chocolate.

It's premium Swiss chocolate, but I appreciate.

Intense and fragrant dark chocolate made

with cacao source from Ecuador and Ghana.

Thank you.

Ecuador and Ghana are known

for their high quality forastero.

This is one of the most popular cacao for the industry.

Oh, also Walmart.

I actually prefer the cheaper one.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Fine & Raw, 83% dark.

This is nice and thin.

I'm proud of it.

[Chocolatier] It has a good snap.

There's some sort of swirling

on the top of this chocolate,

which to me indicates it might not be the best temper.

A little bitter, a little grainy.

It doesn't really melt so well.

Maybe it's a little bit bloom.

Not a lot but a little bit.

The texture's off in some way.

The cocoa bean has a shell on the outside of it

and you have to do a good job of removing that shell

while you're making chocolate,

or else you're gonna get some grittiness.

My guess is that this has a higher than usual amount

of coco husk in it.

It finishes in a way that I don't particularly care for.

And it's giving maybe a little bit of a rush job

on some of the roasting.

The roasting a lot of times can mellow out

some of that acidity.

It tastes more green,

tastes more vegetable than the other ones.

If you don't roast it then it's gonna taste more grassy,

more green.

[chuckles] So this is Fine & Raw, 83% dark chocolate.

Raw chocolate doesn't go through the roasting process.

But why do we roast it is because it really enhances

the flavors of the cacao.

So, there is some line of thinking that you maintain

some of the antioxidants and the polyphenols in chocolate

if you don't roast it.

But chocolate that is roasted

already has such high polyphenols.

And I love the fact that this is handmade.

And in Brooklyn, shout out to Brooklyn

[Narrator] Hu, simple dark chocolate.

This is very thick.

And the tempering is very good.

This one is nice and clear on the top.

[chocolate snaps]

Okay, good snap.

Could be 70.

It's not overly sweet.

This has a well developed flavor.

It's actually pretty well balanced.

[Chocolatier] Smooth.

I feel it needs to be conched maybe longer hours.

Hmm, I'm tasting some smoke,

and the smoke adds like a umami kind of flavor to it.

This probably my favorite.

[Chocolatier] This is Hu, simple dark chocolate.

I love you guys.

Organic unrefined coconut sugar is the nectar

of the coconut palm.

It's a little bit lower on the glycemic index

than regular cane sugar.

And then when it's mixed with chocolate,

the sweetness doesn't pop out at you.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Godiva, 72% dark chocolate.

This is like a little individual piece.

This is, okay, hold on.

[chocolate snaps]

Oh nice, very nice snap.

It's sweet though.

A little bit on the gummy side,

which could be an indication

of over refined sugar particles.

So, when sugar particles get really small,

they tend to wanna clump together.

Really well balanced though.

A little bit of fruit, little bit of acidity.

Deep chocolatey fudginess.

Aftertaste though is a little bit,

we have a little bit of bitterness, rubbery flavor.

A cup of hot chocolate flavor,

which is for me the hallmark of like,

all the commercial chocolate makers got together

and they were like, when people want dark chocolate,

they want it to taste like a cup of hot chocolate.

I absolutely believe this is commercial.

This is somebody's commercial something.

This one really took me on a journey.

The initial flavors were pretty nice,

but this aftertaste is really getting me.

[chocolatier laughs]

Godiva, oh my god.

Very surprised, but very good.

[Chocolatier] This is Godiva signature.

72% cacao dark chocolate.

Eight individually wrapped mini bars.

Belgium 1926.

So you know it's real, right?

We have butter oil here, which is a first.

Not my favorite.

I wouldn't eat this if my life depended on it.

Clearly my life didn't depend on it and I ate it today.

But the dramatic effect.

[wrapper tears]

Alter Eco, 85% cacao classic blackout

Snap's pretty good.

So, this is definitely bloom.

It has that white film.

I'm nervous.

This one crumbles.

Maybe it came out of temper at one point

and then re-hardened.

The top here indicates that that might be what happened.

I find it too dark for my palette.

Flavor's not balanced.

The bitterness is taking up a lot more space.

I want to guess that this chocolate's about 85%.

Whoa, this is Alter Eco classic blackout.

85% cacao.

And 85%, if it is a bad quality cacao,

it would taste too bitter.

It's darker for my palate, but it's not overwhelming.

If you're eating it for a tasting experience,

maybe not this one.

But if you're eating it to restore forests

and for the health benefits, it's pretty good.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Beyond Good, 70% pure dark.

It's a little thicky.

You don't discriminate.

[chocolate snaps]

Snap is good.

This one's a little bit lighter in color,

which could be from the cacao, could be from milk powder.

That's the snappiest one we've tried.

Pretty snappy.

The flavors are complex.

Like I'm tasting liquorish, I'm tasting fruit.

[Chocolatier] It's very fruity.

Fruit forward.

A lot of berry notes.

The texture, it has a little bit of grainy melting.

This one is bloom too.

Pretty smooth.

And the flavor of this one really trumps a lot

of the other chocolates that we've been tasting.

Is this Ghana?

Mm, it's Madagascar.

Usually the best fruity cacao is come from Madagascar.

This is Beyond Good.

[Chocolatier] Beyond Good, 70% cocoa, pure dark.

Boom.

Grown in Madagascar.

Made at the source.

I mean, that's just so profound.

And this has direct trade certification.

You directly trade with the farms.

I know these guys, they're really good people.

I needed a comeback.

The Great Value was lingering in my spirit.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] 365 Whole Foods, 70% cacao dark chocolate.

Cross section looks, actually exceptionally smooth.

There's no indication of any particles.

Let snap it.

Doesn't snap very well.

This is a thickness that I really do enjoy.

It's very smooth.

Nutty.

This one's weird.

It's like kind of waxy.

It's sort of sticking to my mouth in an unpleasant way.

Could have vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter.

The signs of cheapness are like that fake vanilla flavor.

When you're walking past Bath & Body Works

from September to Thanksgiving,

when everything is like, warm sugar pumpkin pie.

That's what this tastes like.

Probably like 70%.

[Chocolatier] Oh, 365.

[Chocolatier] Yeah, 70%.

I'm really sort of tasting the soy lecithin.

There are a lot of good chocolates

that you can buy from Whole Foods.

This is not one of them.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Valrhona dark chocolate guanaja 70%.

[chocolate snaps]

Snap is good.

Fruity, sweet, melts good.

It's a very pleasant chocolate.

It's smooth.

This one has a higher fat percentage, I would guess.

So, maybe they're using extra cocoa butter.

There is a little bit of fruit flavor.

70%.

[chocolatier laughs]

Why didn't you tell me?

This is what I buy for my chocolate.

Valrhona 70% Guanaja.

Guanaja was the island where Christopher Columbus landed.

And the cacao beans were being traded as money.

This chocolate is super easy to work with.

It's a brand for chefs.

What make me choose this chocolate

is because it's not bitter, it's not too sour,

and it's very neutral flavor.

It's very pleasant.

This one is actually made from beans

that Valrhona sources.

I love Valrhona.

They're good folks, they make good chocolates.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Ritter Sport, 50% dark chocolate.

It melts good.

Definitely smooth.

It has a nutty flavor.

Really mild in flavor.

Like coconut taste.

Snackable, kind of sweet for me.

It's too sweet.

It's not my type.

And this is like take a chocolate bar

to a movie theater kind of chocolate.

There maybe is a little bit of milk powder.

This is Ritter Sport, 50% cocoa dark chocolate.

Sugar first thing.

So, you can decide for yourself if you want

to eat chocolate that's half sugar. [laughs]

[Narrator] Meiji, black chocolate.

Alright, a little individual.

I like these 'cause then I could pretend

like I'm not eating a lot.

Every time you open your chocolate,

you're exposing it to the elements,

which increases any chance for bloom.

Having smaller individually wrapped pieces allows you

to basically eat the part that you were going to eat

and not expose the rest of your bar.

Why did I put this whole thing in my mouth?

I don't know why I did that.

I was so excited about the miniature size.

This one's like the most boring

of any of the ones we've tried.

Mm, bad.

Everything, texture, flavor.

It's not my palette at all.

This is something that I would probably give out

for Halloween at my grandmother's house.

The answer's no here.

This is Meiji black chocolate from Japan.

Doesn't say the percentage.

Why do you call it black?

[Chocolatier] This one's got

quite a bit of ingredients here.

The first is sugar, and it tastes like it.

And it has the whole milk powder.

This is a milk chocolate.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Blue Stripes, 70% whole cacao chocolate.

[chocolate snaps]

Snaps.

It's not my... Ugh.

It's not, I can't.

It's not a good flavor.

It's like, I'm sorry, repulsive.

[Chocolatier] It's really bitter.

Definitely the most like vegetal tasting.

There's a depth of flavor here.

It's not just hot chocolate, it's not just vanilla.

I like it.

It has this fermented kind of flavor to it.

Texture, not the best.

[Chocolatier] This tastes like it has like

some of the shell from the bean in it.

There's a little grittiness here.

I know what this is.

It doesn't have the shell.

It has pieces of the dried cocoa pod in the chocolate,

I think.

This is Blue Stripe.

Yeah.

Blue Stripes, cacao shell fiber.

I have no idea why you would want that texture in it.

I don't really see the benefit in using the exterior pod

as an ingredient when it's sort of vital to composting

at the farm level,

I did not enjoy it.

It was definitely different.

But I like unique and weird and kind of quirky.

Quirky?

Quirky.

Quirky things.

[Narrator] Theo pure dark, 85% dark chocolate.

We're smelling this intense cocoa scent.

Not bad.

A little bitter.

I like the level of sugar.

This is pretty smooth.

No real off flavor.

I'm tasting hazelnut is really, really warm.

Cinnamon nutmeg.

It has sort of medium acidity

and it tastes like it has peanut shell

or almond husk flavor to it.

For a really dark chocolate,

this is pretty mild, pretty tasty.

Theo.

Yeah, 85%.

Ground vanilla bean.

That's probably is also what's lending toward

that nutty kind of flavor.

Fair trade does a really good job of making sure

that the farmers never make lower than a specific amount.

This is pretty good for being 85%.

It goes down easier than a lot of other chocolates

that are this dark.

[Narrator] Divine, 70% dark chocolate.

It has the aroma of cocoa butter, nutty, like raisins.

The smoothness was there, the balance of flavor was there.

Not super complex.

It has a distinct flavor.

It's a single origin.

You cannot make this flavor if you mix different beans.

If it's all the same beans, you can identify like,

oh this is a navy bean.

Right, we taste lecithin.

One of the things I'm learning about this experience

is that I didn't know I could taste lecithin.

As I said, this is a chocolate that I could eat.

Divine.

[Chocolatier] Oh, where does it come from?

I never heard of this.

[Chocolatier] States the name of the farmer's union here.

Kuapa Kokoo Farmer's Union, Ghana.

So, it's obviously,

is a bean that comes from one single origin.

That is super, super rare.

[Narrator] Moser Roth, 70% cacao dark chocolate.

It is melting really fast.

Gives an indication of possibly some sort of lecithin

or vegetable fat.

[chocolate snaps]

It's a very light snap.

This one is not bad at all.

Balance is good.

It does not have a distinct flavor

like the one that I tasted just previously.

Nothing really standing out about it.

Both positive and negative, but easy to consume.

This could be 70%.

The 70% of Lindt tastes more bitter.

And I think it's because of the type of cacao bean.

[Chocolatier] This is Moser Roth, and this is a 70%.

I've heard of all the.

That's where you go when you wanna buy chicken

for 20 cents a pound.

Not expensive, I can tell.

[Producer] It's $2.35.

[chocolatier laughs]

But it's not bad.

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Ritual Chocolate, mid mountain blend.

This one has a lot of flavor.

If the food in front of me is good,

and we see a little shoulder lean,

that's how you know you made it.

Very sour.

Mm, very sour.

But it's citrus, it's Lemony.

Tastes a lot like star anise or like licorice.

Indicates that there was some care given

to the fermentation of the cocoa.

This is up there.

This is one of the top ones I've tried.

Oh, nice.

So this is Ritual Chocolate, mid mountain blend, 70% cacao.

They make chocolate in Utah in the mountains.

Source their beans really carefully.

They make it in really small batches,

and you can taste the difference.

Cocoa, cane sugar, cocoa butter.

Amen to y'all.

Y'all doing it right.

Tasting notes actually are strawberry fudge

and graham cracker.

Okay, I don't find that.

I don't see it.

People absolutely perceive flavors differently.

It's all in how your brain is wired.

[Producer] Guess how much this chocolate is?

Yeah, probably $12.

[Producer] How the hell do you know that?

[chocolatier chuckles]

[wrapper tears]

[Narrator] Spring & Mulberry,

pure dark date sweetened chocolate.

So this bar looks like it was poured a little bit

over the mold, but the temper looks good.

[chocolate snaps]

Okay.

It's grainy.

This one has a weird texture.

This graininess is a little off putting to me.

It's not bloomed,

so I don't think the graininess is coming from the temper.

Flavor wasn't bad though.

The flavor is pretty balanced.

Very much acceptable for my palette,

but the texture needs to improve.

[Chocolatier] This is Spring & Mulberry,

pure dark date sweetened chocolate.

Date sweetened chocolate.

Is that what you're doing?

Which would describe that sort of fibrous texture.

Dates are a pretty good alternative sweetener for chocolate.

It's lower on the glycemic index.

There's only so far down you can grind a date.

[wrapper tears]

Lilly's, extra dark chocolate.

Let's give it a snap.

Let's give it another snap.

So it doesn't really snap that well.

So the temper does look a little bit off.

Y'all gonna do this on the last one.

This is crazy.

I snapped it and a boulder came out.

Nutty.

That's a nut flavor.

This is smooth.

It's more like a common dark chocolate.

Very well balanced.

This one is mild and bitter.

Not a lot of chocolate flavor.

And then the aftertaste, there's pretty strong bitterness.

It doesn't feel like a bitterness from cacao.

There's something in this.

Mm, what is that?

Maybe a combination of stevia and sugar alcohol.

Is this that no sugar joint?

That's what it is.

It's Lilly's.

Extra dark chocolate style bar.

[Chocolatier] 70% cacao and no sugar added.

What the hell is this?

[censor beep]

Chicory root?

It has chicory root fiber.

I mean, chocolate already has fiber, but they added more.

I think this is supposed to be a chocolate

for people that suffer from diabetes.

But it's not bad.

This is a roast that I like.

Everything after that is a no.

I would never eat this on purpose.

[Narrator] Now let's see which dark chocolates

our chocolatiers and chocolate makers liked the most

and the least.

I love the Divine bar.

I thought it was a bar that I could eat every day.

I could tell that it come from a single origin.

I love the Valrhona.

It has a good balance of citrus

and a little bit of bitterness.

So, my favorite chocolate today was definitely

the Ritual bar.

It had the most complexity.

You could really taste

that it was made from high quality cacao.

If I had to choose my favorite dark chocolate today,

is probably gonna go to Hu.

Super smooth chocolate bar, balanced flavor, complex.

It still sticks with me, I can still taste it now.

My least favorite was Blue Stripe.

Tasted more like medicine than a nice treat.

And my least favorite was the Fine & Raw bar.

For the price of it,

it just had too much gritty texture to it

and too much herbal bitterness.

My least favorite bar unequivocally was

that Great Value bar.

Everybody is foul for handing that to me.

You're gonna pay for good chocolate.

Chocolate is not supposed to cost $2.

There's no way to take care

of the people involved in supply chain.

There's no way to craft it well.

Reduce the amount of chocolate that you eat

so you can eat a higher quality chocolate.

Make sure to store your chocolate

between 60 and 70 Fahrenheit.

[cheerful music]