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One of the presents I gave esrblog for Christmas this past year was Trader Joe's Chocolate Palette--a cube consisting of ten diffrent bars of chocolate, each at about 70% cacao concentration, each made from beans grown in a different region. My thought is that we would have our own chocolate tasting, and see whether the result enhanced our knowledge about the product of different regional beans.

This afternoon, we finally had the chance to do the tasting. We sat down armed with seltzer water and Carr's water crackers (for palate cleansing), ziplock bags (for storing the uneaten remains), pens and paper (for recording our observations).

I was disappointed. Most of the bars seemed to be at best indifferently processed, excessively gummy, grainy, or muddy in texture, and disappointingly like each other. On the other hand, we were able to ferret out some differences. esrblog claimed that the Sao Thome specimen, though badly processed, tasted distinctively like other chocolate he's had from beans grown in that region, though I could not distinguish such differences. My favorite was the specimen from Peru--which was one of the most interesting (and, perhaps significantly, the only 60% bar in the pack). He liked the Sao Thome (which I thought was pretty good as well) and the specimen from Papua New Guinea (ditto). Both of us detested the 73% bar from Tanzania, which was bitter and reminiscent of supermarket baking chocolate.

Now I'd like to try the same type of experiment with better quality brands from the various regions. *That* would be interesting.