Tastings & Events | Choqoa

The second ‘official’ Choqoa Tasting event yesterday in Antwerp was a great fun chocolate celebration. We were with a group of 16 enthusiast people; friends bringing their own friends, and even an older couple who got the Tasting Event as a birthday gift from their daughter: what a great surprise! And also my chocolate buddy Sofie ‘Chocolaterie’ from Barry Callebaut, happily joined this event.

Learnings from previous sessions made me make a selection with bigger care and offer a broader variety of cacao experiences. I also therefore bought some Domori and found myself a bunch of bars I hadn’t taste myself yet: Zotter, Pacari, and Bouga.
I started with a small introduction into cacao trees and pods, the bean-to-bar process, and to all delight Sofie from Callebaut passionately helped explain into detail the various steps, with good interaction from the crowd.

Off to the tasting! I projected the Amano tasting wheel in the screen to give guidance to the tasting, and people really enjoyed discovering such a chocolate sensations. This time I had a good variety that really added value to the tasting experience and was more than appreciated. It was pleasurable to see people taking chocolate to the next level! Everybody shared his impressions so the atmosphere was pretty comfortable. Halfway already people giggled and said they started to feel the chocolate raising to their brain, giving them the cacao ‘high’ Yes it’s positive magic.

All in all we had 10 different chocolates, list & details are below, and everybody really said to have enjoyed, and even would return another time! Everybody happily took their 2 included bars home, bought some more even to continue sharing the passion.
I’m already looking forward to the next event, you’re all invited to join Choqoa!

Read on for details of all the tasted bars!

Continue reading ‘Report: The 2nd Choqoa Tasting Event’

In Belgium, home of the world famous ‘Belgian Chocolates’, I’ve taken up the challenge to share and show people the path to real chocolate, fine origin artisan cacao.
After a long while I decided to do so starting with the now infamous Choqoa Sampler packs, and also by organizing chocolate tasting events to have the means and moments to personally inspire people with “the food of the gods”. My first event took place some days ago and here’s how people responded to chocolate:

We were with a nice group of about 10. After some earlier small informal tryouts I took some learnings with me and started off with a small introduction on the sexy cacao tree, pods and beans, and briefly explained the making process. We had some good questions then on the differences with industrial brands like Callebaut and I showed some pics of the Amano Chocolate factory.
Mosts really appreciated this introduction, because the cacao tree is funny, sexy and full of secrets, and how often do you wonder yourself about the source of your food?

Off to the tasting then! I learned from Martin Christy, founder of SeventyPercent.com, to make a program instead of just grabbing for some bars, so I made small plates with chunks from all the bars to hand out. I also distributed some sheets to take notes and a tasting wheel to have some reference to our taste buds. All this helpst to take the clutter of the table and focus on tasting chocolate. The Amedei was a great opener to ‘set the bar’and we then moved on to plenty of other bars, the full list is below this post.

Time after time most were pretty intrigued by the variety of aromas and sensations, though they suggested getting some more guidance in what flavors they should detect. A good point to work on! I would also have put some more variety in the selection, I still had too many options, but off course it also depends on your stock as well.

One of the participants, Johan, is doing a great job in sharing the message for me and he brought me a fresh Amano Ocumare milk from San Fransisco. All of us were really surprised by this very untypical milk sensation; it’s a superb bar that gives a whole new level to milk chocolate. I’m leaving the idea of ‘percentages’ more and more and this bar proves it’s very very possible.

As a special for this evening I also served a double fine whisky and chocolate pairing: but you can read all about this tantalizing pairing experience in my previous blog post.

Those true discoveries were the better moments, and most likely everybody said to have had a very nice tasting experience and gladly returned home with their own chocolate bars.

Check out the next Choqoa tastings en events on my EventBrite page, see you soon!

Read on for details of all the tasted bars!

Continue reading ‘Report: The First Choqoa Tasting Event’