We have a saying at my house..."ideology is a flavour". 

It's intersting how often what people believe doesn't match with what's actual.  One year my (then) middle school daughter did a social experiement for the science fair.  She took one brand of chocolate, re-melted it, remoulded it into 'blank' molds, then broke it up.  She then labelled it as 6 different brands of chocolate (remember it's all the exact same chocolate, just labelled differently) - and gave it to people and asked them to rate it from 1(hate it) to 10(love it).  She then asked people to rate which brands were their favorite and least favorite.

Those people who indicated a preference of chocolate type "A", when they tasted the chocolate that was labelled "A" - rated it very highly.  If they indicated they hated chocolate brand "B" - when the tasted that chocolate labelled "B" - they gave it a very low rating.

 Exact. Same. Chocolate.  Wildly large range of liking scores that directly correlated to their brand preference reporting.

Fascinating insight into the behavioral aspects driven by beliefs.

Mast Brothers makes the best Chocolate in the world.  (but still has bars available for purchase while using tiny volume cocoatown granite grinders.  If it's so good why isn't he sold out??)

Fortunato No. 4 is the rarest chocolate in the world (but is available wholesale through Chef Rubber, and wholesalers like Qzina specialty foods.)

Amadei makes a very expensive "Porcelana" chocolate bar (that is practically as black as an oreo cookie.  Hmmm.... a blend???)

Xocai makes "cold processed" anti-oxidant rich chocolate (that tastes like chocolate)

Countless Organic merchants promote "raw" cocoa powder (that magically has a rich chocolatey taste)

10's of thousands of chocolatiers who "make chocolate"  (grrrrrrr.... this is the worst one and really pisses me off!)

....and the list of misinformed marketing crap goes on...

 

Clay, can you guess how many people think Lindt 70% Excellence is "good" chocolate?  It would BLOW YOUR MIND!!!  In the past 6 years I've hosted over FIVE HUNDRED chocolate and wine tastings for well over 10,000 people who for the most part, thought Lindt was good quality.  I would rather lick a dive bar parking lot than eat the burnt crap that Lindt calls "70% Excellence".  However, they spend millions of dollars per year here in Canada buying premium shelf space in large grocery stores and department stores to flog the public with their brand.  Not to mention the millions of dollars they spend on television advertisements that show the Lindt "masters" in their impeccable chef whites, stirring their vats of chocolate!

What a farce! 

When tasted side by side with a good quality chocolate, almost 50% actually spit out the Lindt.

 

I'm not worried about some bearded hippie with a handful of dinky stone grinders and a chocolate "God" complex.  If anything, he's doing our industry a favour!  I'm sure even his worst chocolate is still better than Lindt!  I'm worried about companies like Lindt.  To most people, chocolate is still a candy - a novel, convenience item to be grabbed on the way to the cash register at the drug store, or grocery store.  As long as large companies are able to buy this premium shelf space, THEY will dictate the chocolate buying habits and taste preferences of the masses, not the bearded hippie with the big mouth.

 

I think the world needs 1,000 more bearded hippies to counter balance companies like Lindt and the chocolatiers who go around telling people they make chocolate when they don't.

updated by @brad-churchill: 02/19/15 22:24:33

Ahh the power of marketing.

What i would classify as the 'best' chocolate, most people will frankly never see in their lifetimes.  I make it myself from beans that just aren't available to anyone.  Many times when friends or family taste it, they don't like it because it's so different than what the average joe believes to be good chocolate (ie what's avaialble on the grocery store shelves).  For me it's a wonderfully complex symphony of flavors and nuances and textures that have been carefully orchestrated.

"Best" is vague at best (bah-dum!) - what are the criteria for best?  Hershey's sells an *awful* lot of chocolate, making more money on it than anyone else.  Financially, they might consider themselves to be the best.  Mars has more technical knowledge than anyone on the planet - technically they're the best.  I'm guessing no one here would put either of them in the best category 8)

I suppose the old addage applies here - which wine is the best?  The one you like!

I've given them several chances and every bar has been either "meh" or "nope". I just can't get excited about it. The packaging is really the biggest selling point. It looks nice enough that you don't need to wrap it if you are giving it as a gift. That has got to account for a large percentage of business. It looks good on a shelf in a boutique so you get wholesale accounts that normally wouldn't be stocking chocolate. I'm a bit of packaging design nerd and I think that many chocolate companies miss out on opportunity because they don't invest in quality design and packaging. That being said, in this case definitely the Emperor's New Clothes...or lipstick on a pig. 

Your point about the danger of Mast Brother's coming to represent "good" chocolate reminds me of the tyranny of Starbucks. We all know the coffee quality there is crap, but it's become the benchmark of "real" coffee for the masses. 

 

If you have to say you are the greatest about yourself, can it be true?

The "impressively bearded" Mast Bros were featured in a Vanity Fair article, See All The Mast Bros Chocolate Wrappers .

BTW, I know the Mast Bros are impressively bearded because the article's author, Joel Podolsky, goes out of his way to point it out, emphasizing that the bros are "the self-described poster boys for hipster to gourmet chocolate." The key there is self -described.

Rick Mast then "... tells it as it is: ' I can affirm that we make the best chocolate in the world . It's not the sort of chocolate bar you’re going to pound back one after another.'"

The second half of that statement is confounding to me, as whether or not you can pound something back is not an indicator of its quality. I couldn't pound back even one blood sausage. Personally, I don't think I could pound back a single Mast Bros bar either because I find, to borrow a paraphrase made famous by Forrest Gump, " I never know what I'm going to get." They might just maybe do a good job with one batch but the next batch of "the same" chocolate will be awful. When I go into the factory tasting room in BillyBurg it's all I can do to finish a nibble of each of the samples they put out. Calling out defects in beans as virtuous in chocolate. In other words, I don't think they've mastered the craft part of craft chocolate.

The wrappers are nice. But you don't eat the wrappers.

And that sums the whole thing up, for me. It's the Emperor's new clothes. Say it loud enough and long enough and spend enough money marketing it - and you can get a lot of people to believe. But, the fact remaing, saying it is so doesn't make it so .

The real danger, in my mind, with this kind of self-ascribed position, is that people will look at the underwhelming chocolate the Mast Bros produce and think it represents what good chocolate should be. And then when some other chocolate doesn't taste like the Mast Bros chocolate well, then it must not be "good" chocolate. And that is not a good thing for the growing from-the-bean craft chocolate movement.

I have been tasting chocolate professionally now since 1998 and I have had the great food fortune over this time to taste many of the world's great chocolates made by many of the world's great chocolater makers. In my list of the top five from-the-bean chocolate makers in the US (let alone the world), the Mast Bros don't even crack the top twenty.

Your thoughts?

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@DiscoverChoc

updated by @clay: 04/09/15 04:28:08