What I have learned about chocolate.

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The fruit of chocolate.

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Cacao have seeds that come from a slightly smaller american football shaped pod. They come in several long strings inside the  that is covered in this white, kinda slimey but actually good tasting substance. It tastes a bit like pineapples. The seeds are bitter and unpleasant 

Processing

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Those seeds are harvested, usually fermented, dried, shelled and broken into tiny pieces aka Cocoa nibs 

The proccess called conching is when it's ground into a thick paste called chocolate liquor (its not alcoholic). More conching is time/money intensive but yields smoother and usually better chocolate. 

The liquor is 50% of the cocoa you know and almost 50% cocoa butter.  Cocoa butter is the main ingredient in REAL white chocolate.  The liquor and most of the cocoa butter is separated and after some minor processing you get cocoa powder and a white block of cocoa butter

Tasting chocolate

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Cacao takes on the flavors of local plants around it.  If processed correctly, dark chocolate can have extra notes like berries, cinnamon, pepper, flowers and MANY other flavors without adding any additional flavors into the chocolate. 

Terrible processing and mishandling Cacao removes said flavors.  

From my experience Big name companies do just this Lindt, Hershey, Mars are no way to experience how dark chocolate should taste.

Milk chocolate dilutes the subtle flavors and is almost a completely different product.  You can easily use poorly handled Cacao and get away with a bar that barely contains any cocoa

The best way to eat quality chocolate  (usually)

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Let it melt in your mouth! You will be surprised how many things you are missing if you just eat it like you would a candy bar.  Of course there are some exceptions to that rule  like addins such as crisp rice or orange peel that sometimes chewing 1st then savoring would yield the best results.

Have questions or comments? Send them to me!