I’ve mentioned a couple times that my wife is a pretty serious chocolate snob1, and that has rubbed off onto me, to some extent. I thought I’d share a little about what I’ve learned.
Chocolate is like wine2. Wine is just fermented grapes, how complicated can it be? Well, what species of grapes? Where and when were they grown? How was the growing season that year? How were the grapes handled and processed? How do you consume the wine? Do you just drink it, or are you consciously tasting the wine? These same questions all apply to chocolate.
Commodity vs. Craft
Chocolate is made from cacao3 beans, which I’ll talk about shortly. Commodity chocolate focuses on producing a consistent flavor profile regardless of which cacao is used. Hershey’s can take any cacao from anywhere in the world, and their process will always produce the same Hershey’s flavor4. In contrast, the modern craft (“bean to bar”) chocolate movement focuses on bringing out the natural subtle flavor notes present in cacao, and there are a lot. Craft chocolate has been a thing in Europe (~1920s, Duffy’s, Valrhona) for longer than in the U.S. (late ~1990s, Scharffen Berger, Grenada), but we’ve caught up, there is no shortage of U.S. craft chocolatiers. Craft chocolate makers typically coordinate very closely with the farmers that grow the cacao, sending representatives to inspect and purchase directly from the farms or co-ops of neighboring farmers. The makers then take that cacao and complete the processing into finished chocolate, producing runs of “single-origin” bars. It is not uncommon for a craft chocolate bar to identify not just the country of origin, but the region or specific farm, and year of harvest5.
The Beans
Cacao beans grow on trees, in the pulpy inside of a cacao pod. There are (like grapes) lots of varieties of cacao trees, and (like grapes) flavor notes in the cacao depend on variety, and are influenced by region and the conditions of individual growing seasons. Since man has been cultivating cacao as a crop for centuries, some varieties have been bred for specific characteristics, like high production, at the expense of quality. Cacao grows between the tropics at lower elevations (1000ft). It is a rainforest tree that grows under the canopy. This means that most cacao production takes place in economically depressed countries, and cacao is frequently a poverty crop.
Harvest and Fermentation
Cacao is usually grown in terrain that makes it impractical to use heavy equipment, so harvesting is typically by hand. The pods are broken open, and the beans and pulp are fermented for three to five days and then dried. Fermentation6 is the first place where handling can significantly affect quality. A small, poor farm, for which cacao is not the primary crop, might just throw beans into a box or even a hole in the ground. Ideally, beans will be fermented in a dedicated building that is regularly cleaned, and the beans will be turned periodically to promote uniform fermentation. Drying the beans is, again, another opportunity for contamination. Poor farms might just spread the beans on the ground, unprotected from debris or litter from farm activity or passing animals.
Processing
The general steps for processing cacao into chocolate are winnowing and cleaning, roasting, grinding, pressing, refining, conching, and molding. Decisions made at every step will affect the final product.
Cleaning and winnowing removes debris and chaff from the beans. In some cases, the beans may require actual washing (remember the passing animals?), which can degrade flavor.
Roasting, like roasting coffee, will greatly affect final flavor. Different roasting levels will promote some flavor notes at the expense of others. Craft chocolate makers will test beans at different roasting levels to determine which results in the best7 flavors.
Roasted beans are cracked into “nibs”. Nibs are sometimes a finished product by themselves and are used in baking, candy, brewing, etc8. Nibs are ground further into a coarse paste, and then pressed. Pressing separates the solids (“cocoa mass”) from the fat (“cocoa butter”). Cocoa butter is used extensively in beauty products, where the quality of the beans doesn’t much matter.
Having separated the cocoa mass from the cocoa butter, the next step is to… mix them back together. But maybe not in the same ratio. Cocoa mass and cocoa butter are both considered “cocoa,” for purposes of labeling, so when you see a bar marked “70% Cocoa” that doesn’t say anything about the ratio of mass to butter. A higher percentage of cocoa butter can result in a smoother “melt” (mouthfeel), but at extremes can result in a waxy chocolate.
At this point, other ingredients (primarily sugar: 70% cocoa means ~30% sugar) are added, and the chocolate9 is refined (ground very fine). A surprising amount of food science research has gone into determining the optimal chocolate particle size, which turns out to be 10-14 microns. This is not universal throughout the industry. In particular, “heritage” chocolate makers intentionally produce fairly coarsely ground chocolate to mimic early native central Americans.
Conching is the process of circulating warm chocolate to promote the formation of the desired cocoa butter crystal structure10. This is similar to tempering chocolate on the stovetop. Some makers will conch their chocolate for days. This affects final flavor, texture and appearance. Finished chocolate is then molded, into bars for eating, or into any number of shapes for cooking or baking, etc.
Depending on the chocolate maker, some of these steps may be combined or skipped. My wife and I visited Askinose Chocolate, and toured their facilities11. They used an updraft roaster (I think it was actually a repurposed coffee roaster) that roasted and winnowed at the same time. And they had a rotating drum machine that took care of blending and conching at the same time.
Is It Worth It?
¡Aviso! Snobbery Ahead.
If you haven’t gone shopping for craft chocolate, it’s a little spendy. $10 for a 3 ounce bar is typical at the low end. Is it really worth that much? That is an entirely subjective question, and depends on your preferences, habits and palate. Like for wine, whiskey, coffee, etc., you can spend a lot of money chasing the rarest, most exclusive chocolate for only subtle differences compared to a more common product. If you actually like Hershey’s13, if you can sit down and idly munch your way through a pound bag of M&Ms, if buying a bar of LIndt is “splurging on the good stuff,” maybe $50/lb chocolate is not for you. If your palate can’t tell the difference between tannin and turpentine, perhaps grocery store chocolate candy is your wheelhouse. And, honestly, no judgement, I’m not here to tell you how to live. But if you already spend on premium food stuffs because flavors matter? If you have already developed your palate? Try some good chocolate. I would argue you should try some even if you’re a Whitman’s munching philistine. Even if your preferred tipple is plastic handles of Ancient Age, you may be surprised. Craft chocolate offers an amazing array of flavors. This is the simplified map of positive chocolate flavor notes12. But bear in mind, unless you are at a specialty shop or high end grocery, you’re only going to find commodity chocolate. Any bar that doesn’t identify the source of the cacao is chocolate that has been bent to fit the flavor profile of the brand. “70% Dark” is a lot like “all beef franks,” it could just as easily be the hooves and snouts of the global cacao supply. When you do get some good stuff, treat it with some respect. Don’t just stick it in your gob and chew it up. Just like you don’t guzzle a fine wine, slow down and take some time to really taste it. Try a bit, let it melt in your mouth, and think about what you taste. Try another bit, and see if you get something new. Make an effort to appreciate it, and you’ll be rewarded.14.
—-
1 https://www.chocolatetastinginstitute.org/ Level 2 chocolate taster.
2 Disclaimer: I really don’t know anything about wine.
3 Cacao is pronounced “kah-cow”. Generally, “cacao” is used when talking about unprocessed product. After processing, “cocoa” is used.
4 So they frequently use the worst quality beans. The largest exporter of cacao beans is Ivory Coast, and they are mostly crap. Amusingly, while this article has been in draft, a I read a news piece about Mr. Beast’s “ethically sourced chocolate,” that mentioned he was going to stop sourcing cacao from Peru (a very good country for quality cacao) and start sourcing from “Western Africa,” which probably means Ivory Coast.
5 Just like wine.
6 Fermentation reduces the tannin flavor in finished chocolate and enhances desirable flavor notes.
7 “Best” is highly subjective, of course.
8 Or you can just munch on them.
9 Once you add sugar, it’s chocolate.
10 There are six possibilities, only one is the right one.
11 It’s not huge.
12 The full map breaks each node into multiple related flavors. Note in the bottom corner there is also a map of negative flavor notes. Mmmmm, faecal. When my wife was taking her Level 2 class, she said “they made me taste poop chocolate.”
13 May God have mercy on your soul, and your pancreas.
14 Shameless plug: if you live in central Ohio, my wife does bespoke chocolate tastings.
When I lived in Austin, the OG Whole Foods had a selection of Valrhona confectionery chips in their bulk foods section. One of them (can’t remember which) was my favorite.
My ex-wife’s uncle was a butcher there. He turned his woodworking hobby into making store fixtures for every Whole Foods in the country.
I knew something about the complex methods used to create chocolate, but not all of them, and not in such detail. I forgot about the fermenting process. Thanks for the essay!
I love chocolate, but I love staying out of hospitals more, and so I must avoid anything that might give my pancreas an excuse to act up.
Pancreas – Heywood Banks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne2z-qAWiSQ
My pancreas attracts every other pancreas in the universe with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them….
Tempering chocolate is always fun too.
I’m imaging it being similar to wine in price to quality. For example on a random $15 wine compared to a random $50 wine I can usually taste the difference. But the difference between a random $50 wine and a random $150 of wine is just about lost on me. Naturally there are plenty of exceptions which is why I used random.
There seems to be a point of diminishing returns.
That’s exactly my take as well – I can tell, up to a point. Then it’s wasted on me.
I like wine, but I don’t claim to have a good palate.
It’s like that with most things for me. You’ve got commodity, basic step up, really good, and then highly priced (but not that much better than the really good).
Ayup.
The diminishing returns on Scotch is brutal.
Dark chocolate with a hint of cayenne is where it’s at.
We found the mole, folks!
Preach it, brother. Mrs. Dean makes brownies occasionally that have some Jack Daniels in them and some red Hatch chili powder. Best brownies ever.
I had some Scharffen Berger 62% with nibs. I wasn’t impressed.
I did try some Moka pure dark and coffee, per your recommendation Grummun. That was good.
Yeah, my wife is a snob about pretty much every comestible, from chocolate to cheese, kale to killed. I, on the other hand, do not GAF. As long as my coffee is strong and black, don’t care if it is Folgers or Blue mountain. I will drink $150 a bottle whisky just like well booze. And I cannot, for the life of me, tell the difference between a rib eye, and 80/20 ground beef.
Carry on.
Same… other than I don’t drink — and I’m not sure about the rib eye thing (I assume you mean after it is ground… if you can’t tell between a rib eye steak as a steak and actual ground beef — I think you need to see an optician!).
I do prefer dark chocolate Gharideli (sp?) but that’s more a matter of finding sufficiently dark than texture. I’ve enjoyed Hershey’s Special Dark with Almonds nuggets just as well in the past. So whatever.
Great article thanks!
Much research ahead, lots of candy shops in San Diego county
This was quite educational, thanks. With all the processing involved you’d think chocolate in general would cost more. But I guess mass production and offloading work onto poor people helps.
I love good chocolate.
Interesting.
Generally speaking, I only eat chocolate in the winter. Why? Who knows? Hours of daylight, maybe. I keep a bag of dark chocolate chips for cookies round, and toss some some in my mouth and let them melt. Would I spend $25 on a bag of chips? No, I would not.
There’s a local place (Cleveland Chocolate Company) that had a very nice variety of single origin bars as well as ones with seasonal flavor profiles. Unfortunately, they started to move to a new location 3-4 years ago, and still have no store front open. Clicking through the shop, it seems like they may have shut down permanently during the move. We’ve got a couple other little ones that are around, and the one big local chain.
In particular, “heritage” chocolate makers intentionally produce fairly coarsely ground chocolate to mimic early native central Americans.
Local place does that; I do not care for it.
I’ve seen those, thought about picking some up for the girlfriend, but spiced chocolate is generally not her thing. Of course, she’s happy with the $0.60 packs of powdered hot chocolate.
Even their bars are stone-ground, which I find an unpleasant texture.
I’m not a huge chocolate guy, but I do find the process very interesting.
How do chocolate nerds feel about chocolate candies (not sure of the correct term) vs. bars? When we stayed at a chi-chi hotel in London they gave us a little sampler from these guys; artistry aside, the chocolate itself was excellent, both the single-origin and the flavored ones.
That mixed box looks heavenly.
They were so good we were trying to see if we could get a bunch of the small samplers for presents but ISTR they don’t ship internationally.
This is good
https://www.chocosphere.com/default/brand/t-z/valrhona/vlrhn-instants-degustation-les-intenses-250g.html
Just don’t calculate the price.
If you haven’t gone shopping for craft chocolate, it’s a little spendy. $10 for a 3 ounce bar is typical at the low end.
I used to go shopping for what you’re calling craft chocolate. I don’t remember if it had that name back then.
An ex-girlfriend and I, back when we were dating so 15 years ago or so, were talking through a local mall. A husband and wife had set up a kiosk in the mall selling chocolate. All kinds. Milk Chocolate, dark chocolate, nibs, cocoa butter, and I don’t remember what else. My ex and I bought a bunch from them. I kept going back every now and then after that ex and I broke up. Sadly, the husband and wife team shut down the kiosk. Then I slowly wound down my chocolate buying habit.
Is it really worth that much? That is an entirely subjective question, and depends on your preferences, habits and palate.
Yes. It is. I thought it was worth it, but then again, I like chocolate.
Is having footnote 13 before 12 in the text a test to see if anyone read the article?
I guess I need more caffeine or more sleep.
were talking through a local mall
Were walking through a local mall.
🎶 We’re shopping in the human mall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDid0xBO_k
Toxteth:
Not chopping in the mall?
The good news is that I have not become as obsessive with chocolate as I have with wines and sour ales. I spend enough money on my obsessions already.
But I definitely buy quality chocolates instead of commodity products.
your preferred tipple is plastic handles of Ancient Age
What about Ancient Ancient Age? Hersheys squares served on china?
Yeah… ethically sourced and West Africa strikes me as maybe delusional.
You say “delusional” others say “artisanal”. The important thing is can we capitalize on people feeling smug about their consumption?
slavery is organic
Conspicuous consumption used to be reserved for the rich. Now the woke have taken over.
slavery is organic
I like it.
I made 100% cacao from a tree growing in my in-law’s yard. That stuff is strong. They use it in some food and their version of hot chocolate. They send us a package of it every year.
Sounds like coffee. I understand that once one has a cup of wild coffee (~100 bucks) they will never enjoy the commercial stuff again. It is no surprise that chocolate is that way as well.
I brought tablea into work to share what pure chocolate is like. One guy took a bite before I could tell him how it is used.
🤦♂️
DJ Conner tries baking chocolate (forgive poor quality):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIIU2JvoMX4
I have no idea what the association with the pancreas is but… I do recall being spoiled after a year in Germany where the bottom shelf chocolate is much better than ours.
The Pancreas produces insulin to deal with the sugars that are in pretty much any chocolate that isn’t baker’s chocolate.
Ah, that’s what it does.
No problems in that area knock on wood
I’m not a chocolate snob, but this was my happy place. https://www.mucho.org.mx/
If you are ever in Mesa, AZ:
https://carolinaschocolate.com/
Or Tucson:
https://monsoonchocolate.com/
I get one of their non-bon boxes for Mrs. Dean two or three times a year.
Coffee, tea, wine, chocolate, foods and recipes in general but especially sauces….snobbery abounds. For the smart people it is a source of great amusement.
*My wild muscadine vines are freakin’ loaded this year. I am going to be drowning in black muscadines. It is going to be a good wine/bbq sauce/jelly year. Keeping my fingers crossed.
From the morning thread: Disproportionality in the CJ system. Has anyone pointed out that prisoners are disproportionally criminals? What about the criminals?
especially sauces
mmm, mole
Any preferred online sellers?
This is the one I found waaaay back in the day: https://www.chocosphere.com/ and they’ve gotten me some tasty products, but I haven’t bought from them in years. The proliferation of higher-end shops meant I didn’t need to order online (and having chocolate shipped to TX was only viable about 2 months out of the year).
I did not need to see that.
https://www.chocosphere.com/default/brand/a-c/cafe-tasse.html?limit=all&variety=200
I’m pretty sure that Cafe Tasse is one of the chocolates that I used to buy when I travelled to Europe regularly.
Given my exposure to these various artisinal labels, I am going to say that I prefer the commodity chocolate because of its consistancy and predictability. I know what I’m getting when I open that package.
wax?
AKA “white chocolate”? 😝
White chocolate is cocoa butter and sugar without any of the other cocoa mass. One could argue that it’s not actually chocolate.
You can argue anything, you would still be wrong.
Alpine White was yummy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIIU2JvoMX4
Buyer’s remorse
More than a third of workers, 36%, believe their college degree was a waste of time and/or money, according to a poll by Indeed.
Younger generations were more likely to feel this way, with 51% of Generation Zers and 41% of millennials saying their degrees weren’t relevant. That compares to 30% of Gen X and 20% of baby boomers.
——-
Fifty-two percent of college graduates said they would not have attended college if a degree were not required for so many jobs and 60% believe they could perform their current job just as well without one.
The choice of a college major also sparked regret. More than half of college graduates, 54%, said they would choose a different major if given the chance and 45% would work in a completely different field.
High school guidance counselors hardest hit.
My degree is irrelevant to my occupation. At least it was relevant to what I was doing at the time and planned to continue as a career. Bureaucracy had other plans.
As a long ago friend, an EE and an Army captain, told me “Don’t let a good education stand in your way to success.”
My take is thus – I do not regret most of what I studied insofar as I like learning.
I have used pretty much none of it in my career save for what I learned in an elective on UNIX scripting.
It was certainly not worth the dollar value save for the insane reliance on credentialism for getting the job itself. HR drones slap it on the maditory prerequisites and nobody really questions them.
“I like learning”
This. Some people become addicted to that ‘Aha!’ experience.
It is natural for people to fill in gaps in knowledge with magical bullshit. That is a reveal that what they really want is truth to be revealed to them. They think the angels will sing….hell Hollywood has a standard theme music for that….the clouds will part and a vast, majestic vista will open before them. “Ahhhhh the wonder of it all!”
Reality is different. When you do see the truth you recognize it and say “Aha. Of course. It was right there all the time, why didnt I see that?”
I prefer reality. I dont need to hear the angels sing. I just love that Aha moment. Since we cannot ever know the complete truth, we can only approach it asymptotically, it is a lifetime quest and that is good enough for me.
My HS physics teacher cued up a song (probably Handels Messiah) when he wrote F=MA on the board for the first time.
Wow, it’s almost as if people had listened to us, they wouldn’t have those regrets.
I have a Bachelor’s degree and an Associate degree in two related fields. I could have gotten away with just the Associates. Meanwhile my direct manager never finished college, he taught himself how to code using online resources. There are of course fields such as medicine and engineering where you really need a degree. But I think we can safely say that encouraging every high school grad to attend college has been a big failure.
Can we also roll back job titles so fewer things are “engineering”?
sanitation engineers say “hell no”
One of the best troubleshooters I knew was a former auto mechanic. It is about how you think through problems.
I’ve also known college miseducated people I’d rather have not anywhere near the system because their confidence outpaces their ability.
fields such as medicine and engineering where you really need a degree
A lot of both fields are vocational training, experience, or both. Doctors and stamped engineers are just the tip of the pyramid. A lot of the actual work is done by people without postgrad schoolwork.
Stationary, ship, and locomotive engineers (also known as the original engineers) say whatever.
Most people should not go to school beyond the 6th grade, either for lack of ability, effort, or desire.
Reliable, efficient intelligence testing has been around for a long time, but the Supreme Court in its great wisdom banned such things for the private sector.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderlic_test
***
In May 1997, Robert Jordan filed a lawsuit against the city of New London, Connecticut, alleging violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States and Connecticut constitutions, in a case that was referred to by several media outlets as “Too Smart To Be A Cop”,[29][30] based on the city’s application of scores generated by the Wonderlic test.
Jordan was born and raised in New London, and had previous experience in law enforcement, working as a part-time officer in near-by Groton Long Point, and as a seasonal officer for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. In fall 1996, Jordan requested an interview with Keith Harrigan, New London’s Assistant City Manager in charge of personnel. Harrigan informed Jordan that he was ineligible because he scored too high on the written portion of the Wonderlic test intended to evaluate cognitive ability. New London had decided to consider only applicants who scored between 20 and 27 on the written examination. Jordan scored a 33 on the exam, the equivalent of having an IQ of 125.
***
If you are ever in the area I recommend visiting the Malagos Chocolate Museum.
Some brands I like (mid-range?):
Tcho (especially the cappuccino; haven’t had since they went vegan though)
Chuao
Guittard
Leonidas or anything else Belgian
I once had a bar of Valrhona 90% and it put me off chocolate for six months.
This is a cute book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/488895.Chocolate?from_search=true
Also these, if the cookie aspect isn’t too much of a digression:
https://www.amazon.com/Mcvities-Dark-Chocolate-Hobnobs-262g/dp/B017IWL2SG
My husband LOVES chocolate. I, however, cherish my citric acid. Skittles are off the table because they give me palpitations, but otherwise, there is no such thing as too much lemon.
Thanks Grummun, very interesting.
If you go to the MN State Fair or even county fairs there will be a honey display, with hundreds of examples of honey, arranged by color, gin clear to road tar. I am a little partial to the darker flavors, buck wheat for example. Basswood is light color and light flavor.
Our honey varies in color, even during the harvest. It becomes homogenized as we mix honey from early season with late season, one hive location with another. We called it wild flower, since we have no idea what the bees are bringing back on any day.
It’s all good, however.We start the season in about 10 days when the bees arrive.
orange blossom honey was my favorite
Clearly you have never had tabasco pepper honey. A bit east of Toledo Bend there are a number of fields that Mcllhenny rents to grow peppers and yes, they bring in lots ‘o bees that make a honey with just the right amount of bite to it.
Some of the tourist shops have jalapeno flavored honey, Minnesotans leave that on the shelf.
Fourscore:
There’s also Mike’s Hot Honey which has exploded over the past couple of years.
Mine are already busy busy. A constant flow of heavily laden bees into the hives. I cannot remember a more perfect spring in my lifetime. The flowers went crazy. Rain every few days. Everything is unbelievably lush. I have already picked dewberries and some Elliot’s huckleberries. Everything I prepared planting for has taken and growing like mad. My muscadine vines are going to be loaded by august. I am very happy about all of this.
At this rate I will be splitting a hive in no time.
It’s a great time of the year, yours is earlier than ours but we’re appreciative of what we can get. My plants are in the window, apple trees are outside enjoying the sunshine.
I do like orange blossom honey as well but haven’t seen it in the stores I shop in.
Let’s hope it keeps going. Mrs. TOK is planning a trip to GA to get the “good” peaches. She skipped a few years, I think last year the harvest was terrible.
I find orange blossom to be quite meh.
My favorites include basswood, tupelo, fireweed, cranberry, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry. I also like sourwood and meadowfoam (tastes like marshmallow).
I have also tasted (and made mead with) goldenrod, tulip poplar, buckwheat, apple, clover, and star thistle. There are others, but they don’t come directly to mind.
I am in an odd spot. I can throw a rock north and hit zone 8, a rock south and hit zone 9. I am too far north for oranges and too far south for apples. I envy you and. your apple trees. I can grow Kumquats, that is it for citrus. As for apples some people have a bit of luck with Granny Smith but it is rare. I have to settle for figs, pawpaws and pears. And persimmons…I suppose I should be happy with the native fruits as we do have a few.
https://www.saratogateaandhoney.com/collections/honey
They have those disposable ice cream spoons if you want to taste.
My favorites were from trees: Tupelo, Acacia, Basswood, some particular Italian lemon tree thing.
I found the berry bush ones disappointing. (blueberry, blackberry, cranberry)
I also really liked alfalfa.
Trader Joe’s used to do a rainbow of honey sampler around Christmas, 8 different varietals of honey. The most interesting one (to me) was the eucalyptus one. It had a potent flavor that meant you would need to use it carefully and sparingly.
This was heavenly (DC’ed). Other makers seem to exist though.
https://www.traderjoesreviews.com/product/trader-joes-orange-blossom-honey-french-liquid-soap-reviews/
Avocado honey is my fave. It’s got kind of a molasses thing going on.
That Tabasco pepper honey sounds good.
I like how footnote 13 was before footnote 12 in the article.
I see DEG noticed it first.
Now I need to do an article and randomize the order of the footnotes.
My value profile for booze generally runs out at around $80/bottle (for Scotch), maybe a little more given how prices have gone up. More than that, and while I can generally pick up some of the differences it’s just not worth it to me.
With chocolate, I have a harder time picking up the differences. I can tell mid-tier from industrial chocolate, and to a lesser degree top-shelf from mid-tier, but the single origins pretty much all taste the same to me. I suspect decades of abusing my taste buds with cigars, chili, and (yes) Scotch may contribute to this.
Booze: I once researched scotch because I wanted a top shelve scotch to give as a gift. What I found reading hundreds of reviews and analysis was that there is little connection between quality and price. I ended up getting a mid-price one that rated in the top five in a bunch of ratings lists. The recipient was very pleased.
There seems to be a definite floor beneath which stuff isn’t worth drinking. What even is the point of Dewar’s white or JW Red?
Yes, there is a floor.
Not Adahn:
Dewar’s white can be used in mixed drinks and cocktails, but I would probably step up (in the case I’m doing a Rob Roy or a Penicillin).
Forgot that I tried that trendy Dubai chocolate the other day: meh. Tasty enough but not memorable.
I’ve been meaning to dip some dark chocolate in my pistachio butter.
These euphemisms…
::Sean miraculously creates a taste sensation even better than Reese’s, makes a fortune.::
https://www.nuttynovelties.com/collections/nut-butters/products/dubai-chocolate-pistachio-butter
They’ve already put their product out. Their base pistachio butter is amazing.
Interesting. *munches on a peanut butter cup