Blended-origin chocolate
Chocolate from beans of more than one origin, combined deliberately. A skill rather than a failure to specify.
What it is
A blend combines beans from several origins to produce something none of them gives alone — usually consistency across harvests, sometimes a balance that no single origin achieves.
Craft chocolate's emphasis on single-origin has left blending with an undeserved reputation as the thing you do when you cannot name your source. In practice, constructing a blend that holds its character as individual lots vary is a considerable skill, and it is why an industrial bar tastes the same every year while a single-origin bar does not.
Several craft makers now publish house blends deliberately, naming the components.
- Category kind
- A sourcing claim — this describes the supply chain, not the product
- Legal status
- Industry convention, not a legal definition
- Also called
- blend, house blend chocolate
What the percentage means here
Whatever it means for the composition. Blending says nothing about the percentage.
Commonly misunderstood
That a blend is a lesser product than a single-origin bar. They optimise for different things — consistency against distinctiveness — and a reader who wants the same bar next year is better served by a blend.
Related
Covered in
- Single-origin explainedThe alternative, and often the better-balanced one.
Compared in
- Blended-origin vs single-origin chocolateSet against Single-origin, with the practical consequence of each difference.
Sources
- ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)