How to Host a Chocolate Tasting Party at Home

Listen to Chrystina discuss her chocolate tasting party in Episode 36 of the Party Ideas & Logistics with Chrystina Noel podcast, above.

I’m not sure why it took me so long in my life to host a chocolate tasting party, but I’m glad it finally happened thanks to an excellent suggestion from my friend Elizabeth. First things first, this post is not sponsored by jcoco, I just happened to meet their awesome brand manager at the Create & Cultivate conference a few months ago. Then they sponsored The Blog Connect Conference. And then I found out that they sold chocolate tasting experiences. How could I argue with that?

Choosing Your Chocolate

When tasting, you should choose a “theme” so that the things you are tasting have as few variables as possible when telling the difference between then. jcoco did an excellent job setting that up. You could even do multiple themes to do mini tastings within your larger tasting. jcoco offers three chocolate flights:

1. The Complex Dark,

2. The South American, and

3. The Precious Metals.

The Complex Dark flight has very similar chocolates, but with varying amounts of cacao (86%, 80%, and 70%), so you’re tasting for the bitterness of the chocolate. The South American flight has cacao that was grown in three different South American countries, so you’re tasting for the terroir of the country. (Terroir is a country I stole from wine tasting that means “all the nuances of the environment” from the composition of the dirt, to the climate of the land, to the way the wind blows.) The Precious Metals flight is the only one that has milk in it, and to varying degrees; one bar was milk chocolate, one was golden chocolate, and one was white chocolate.

You could do this was any brand of chocolate, I just loved that they had already package them together in a great little package.

If you found your way into a Whole Foods and found yourself sitting in front of the chocolate aisle, I would recommend choosing a selection of chocolates that have as many similarities as possible, except for one variable, for example:

• They are from different regions.

• They have varying amounts of cacao.

• They have varying flavors added to the chocolate base.

• They have varying levels of darkness.

• They are the same type of chocolate, from different brands.

I was very surprised to find out how little chocolate we actually needed for a tasting. jcoco provided one-ounce bars that could easily be split into 6 tiles. We did all three of the tastings listed above, meaning that we each had 9 tiles, or 1.5 ounces of chocolate. I also really liked that each chocolate bar had only 5 ingredients in it, so it was very easily to tell what the differences in each of the chocolates were. (Oh, there also weren’t any nuts, which was excellent since one of my guests has a nut allergy.)

One thing I would have done differently for next time is in addition to the fancy tasting chocolate, I would have bought a variety of milk chocolates in different brands so we could taste the difference between the good stuff and the stuff we’re used to eating every day. We understood that what we were eating was definitely creamier than a Hershey kiss, but we would have loved to be able to compare them.

How to Taste Chocolate

I’m not expert in this, but in doing some research on the internet I found out that chocolate tasting is very similar to wine tasting. There are essentially four steps:

1. Look at the chocolate. Is it grainy? What is its color? Is it shiny?

2. Listen to the chocolate. When you break it, does it make a loud snap, or does it break easily?

3. Smell the chocolate. One video I watched recommended cupping your nose and taking many quick sniffs like a bunny rabbit would Admittedly, we didn’t try that.

4. Taste the chocolate. Chewing is optional.

jcoco provided tasting notes on the chocolate, very similarly to the decorative words you would use for wine using words like “creamy marshmallow front palette flavor” and “a slight bitterness of dry, dark soil.” We weren’t able to get quite that far into the nuances, but it was nice to have the tasting cards to be able to read what the experts thought we should be tasting.

The Logistics of Tasting Chocolate

Another thing to know about tasting is that you should always go from most bitter, to most sweet. We started with the dark flight since it had the highest percentages of cacao (86%), then moved on to the South American because it had the second highest, and finally onto the Precious Metals. We learned very quickly that going backwards in bitterness really confused your mouth.

You should also make sure that you don’t eat anything with super strong flavors for at least 30 minutes before the tasting starts. Bread, apples, and sparkling water were recommended as palette cleansers between types of chocolate. The bread worked pretty fantastically. Unfortunately, I had put lemon juice on the apples to keep them from turning brown, so we didn’t eat those between chocolates because I messed up the flavor profile. (That said, I’m still not sure how I was supposed to keep the apples from turning brown. Maybe you cut as you go? Or give everyone their own apple to bite into?

I hosted the party on a Sunday afternoon from 2:30 to 4:30pm because it seemed like a time when people wouldn’t have just eaten, and wouldn’t expect to be fed a full meal when they showed up. Overall, the tasting took 90 minutes.

What to Buy to Host a Chocolate Tasting Party

We had four people at the chocolate tasting party. With the specific chocolate bars I chose, we could have had up to 6 easily. I would recommend 1/2 an apple per person, 1/4 of a baguette per person, and 1/2 of a bottle of sparkiling water per person.

One thing I would have done for next time was to buy some cheese for after the tasting was over (which would have required buying more bread than listed above). When the tasting was over, I felt like we could have used something more savory, it also would have lent itself better to easily transitioning into a party as opposed to, “alright, we’ve eaten all the chocolate, now what?” I probably also should have pulled out a bottle of wine. Now I know for next time.

Preparing for Your Chocolate Tasting Party

There were a few things I did before the chocolate tasting party began:

• I purchased the chocolate ahead of time.

• I went shopping for food.

• I purchased favors for each guest, which is super easy to do with 4 total guests. (I’m also always looking for an excuse to buy those cute sugar cookies from Whole Foods…)

• I made tasting menus to put on each table setting. I used Canva which was super easy. (You can find their templates here.) On one side I put the menu and on the other side I wrote down the steps for tasting.

• I set the table. (As one does.)

• I made sure I understood the variables included in each mini chocolate tasting to be able to explain them to the attendees.

That’s it. It was really simple. You don’t need to cook a full meal. You don’t even need to put out forks and knives.

What to Do During Your Chocolate Tasting Party

Once you’re all setup and ready to go, all you need is the guests. Once they arrive, pour them all a glass of sparkling water (or flat water if you have anyone who really doesn’t like sparkling water), explain the chocolates that you will be tasting, explain the steps of how to taste chocolate, and then let everyone go to town. For us, the conversation flowed pretty naturally since everybody understood what they were getting into for the day.

Other Useful Chocolate Tasting Party Resources:

In my internet research, here were some of the best videos and articles I came across during my preparation:

• This super cool video by Epicurious where they bring in a chocolate tasting expert to taste two different chocolates and decide which one is more expensive.

• This tasting guie from MarthaStewar.com.

• This chocolate tasting guide by Ghiradelli Chocolate.

Here are a few more photos showing how the even unfolded (no pun intended):

Have you ever hosted a chocolate tasting party before? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

If chocolate is your jam, you may want to check out this post about what to dunk in chocolate fondue. TBH, I should probably buy a chocolate fountain. Think of all the fun I could have.