Comments on: Live tasting with Per Liss at William Curley

By: Alex_Rast

Alex_Rast — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:37:47 +0000

Ms. Peñaloza: (I assume the feminine attribution is correct? Sorry if not)

I think the difficulty here is in your specification “It’s very important that the information has author and date”. I don’t think it will be difficult to get information about the topics you specify, but it should be noted that very, very little of it is in *written* form. Most of this kind of thing passes round organisations and people by word of mouth and/or personal visits, along with oftentimes internal company knowledge. Sometimes there are professional seminars on these topics as well, but again, these tend to produce a minimum of written material.

It should also be noted that there a LOT of information is confidential regarding processes and methods within chocolate producing companies. I’ve never been precisely certain why this is the case, but chocolate manufacturers tend to be a very guarded group, on the whole.

Another issue is that the question of chocolate evaluation is very much a field in flux, with no clear consensus on a broad variety of topics related to tasting chocolate. Part of this has to do with the divergent objectives of the consumer chocolate market (by far the largest sector, and thus the one where the involved companies are likely to have the resources to devote time to analytic study of the problem) and the fine chocolate market (where a lot depends on the individual specifics of the manufacturer’s process, and where in any case manufacturers of necessity tend to have to focus on internal production).

Nonetheless, the prevailing effect is the first one. You might look at industry journals, which occasionally have some pieces regarding this, but I think the most productive strategy will be to relax your requirement for documentability. I don’t think the people you’re talking to are hiding anything by saying they have no information.

By: Adriana Penaloza

Adriana Penaloza — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:28:38 +0000

Dear Sir,
I’m a student of Food Technology from the Criollo cacao land (Venezuela), and I’m making a research about chocolate sensory evaluation, chocolate positive and negative attributes, requirements and methodology, so I need some information about this, documents or anything from trusted source (author and date). It’s very important that the information has author and date, because I must have a bibliography.
These are some items I have to talk about:
Tasting performance request or legislation.
Assessment panels (number of panelists).
Tasting room conditions.
Chocolate Sensory attributes.
Analytic Sensory methodology to the chocolate tasting (What Sensorial Test I should use).

If you consider that you can help me I will be most grateful.
Please contact me again if you can help me in any way.
Sincerely,
Adriana J. Peñaloza A.
Postdate: I don’t know why, but I have not received any help so now. I have sent this enquiry to prestigious partnerships, organizations and manufactures from Europe and The United States, but no one has anything, they say they have no information about those topics. But I don’t believe them. I am not asking for confidential information, I am only making a research for my university.

By: Masur (Per)

Masur (Per) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 22:06:11 +0000

Sorry for this late reply. I had an enjoyable afternoon together with Martin. Thank’s Martin.
Congratulations to the win Louise!
Wednesday last week I met Satiago Peralta from Pacari when he talked about Pacari and Raw chocolate at an event at Ecuador Swedish embassy. Friday to Saturday I attended the annual Chocolate Festival in Stockholm. A total of 15 100 visitors is pretty good.

By: Martin Christy

Martin Christy — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:43:48 +0000

Thanks Louise, done in a bit of a rush though as I was trying to get the post finished in the shop (had to fake it a bit back at home in the end though, final touching up!) You shouldn’t definitely check out the dessert bar sometime.

Yes, that was us in Paul’s shop, stopping by for Per to stock up on bars to take back to Sweden.

Well done for the brownies, when do we get to try them?!

By: Louise @lou31

Louise @lou31 — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:02:06 +0000

Hi Martin,
Your photos are beautiful! I’ve had my eye on the dessert bar for a while – just need to get around to going!

I think I may have seen you and Per at Paul A Young on Saturday before you went over to William Curley. You were asking about Paul, and he was at the Brownie Bake-off on Old Street?
An account of that event (which I won!) is here: http://www.chocolatereviews.co.uk/gbbo-2010/
Will be adding my own write-up shortly.