A beginner's chocolate tasting

The whole point is comparison. Four dark bars at roughly the same percentage from different origins isolates origin. Four bars from one maker at 55, 65, 75 and 85% isolates percentage. Four bars from different makers at the same percentage and origin isolates the maker's processing. Mixing all three variables at once teaches nothing.

Room temperature, around 20°C — chocolate from the fridge is aromatically closed. No coffee beforehand. Water and plain bread to reset the palate. Work from lower percentage to higher and from milder to more intense. Beyond four or five bars discrimination falls off sharply however careful you are.

Look at the surface and snap a piece — an even sheen and a clean snap tell you about tempering before you taste anything. Smell immediately after breaking, since breaking releases aromatics. Then let a piece melt on the tongue against the roof of the mouth for a minute rather than chewing. The profile changes across that minute, and front, middle and finish are genuinely different in good chocolate.

Not a score. Note what you smell, what arrives first, what the finish is, and whether the mouth feels dry afterwards. Bitterness is a taste; astringency is a drying sensation; conflating them is the most common beginner error and separating them is the most useful skill.

Recognising defects is more useful than any vocabulary of positive descriptors, because it tells you whether you dislike a bar or the bar is defective. Sharp vinegary sourness means acid trapped by fast drying. Musty notes mean mould. Acrid burnt bitterness means over-roasting. Chalkiness means under-refining.