Candy bars use wine lingo to justify rising prices

www.insidedenver.com By The Wall Street Journal February 13, 2003

"The first note is liquorice root, followed by berries and a drawn-out finish of green olive." No, that's not a Chateau Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux. It's straight from the wrapper of a candy bar.

This kind of language is posing a new challenge for the nation's chocolate lovers, who will gorge on an estimated $1.3 billion of the stuff this Valentine's Day. Now, in addition to exercising self-control, chocoholics must attempt to decipher a perplexing new vocabulary that's increasingly being used to market high-end chocolate.

Bars sold at gourmet food shops now boast names like "Premier Cru," and "Single Bean Origin." Turn them over and you'll read about things like the candy bar's "vintage" (the year the cocoa was harvested) or the "terroir" of the beans (where they came from). Some tout their "varietals," or type of bean, as well.

High on the totem pole: One company makes a chocolate solely from rare Porcelana beans and sells it for about $75 a pound. By contrast, a pound of Hershey's chocolate can cost roughly $4.

Restaurants and hotels are getting in on the game as well. Two months ago, the Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia promoted one of its bartenders, Caesar Bradley, to the position of "Hot Chocolate Sommelier." His job: help guests pick a brand of chocolate and percentage of cocoa content.

How did chocolate, one of life's simple pleasures, get so complicated? Part of the change is due to the growing sophistication of the American palate - and chocolate makers' desire to capitalize on it. Every gourmet food producer wants its product to be "the next olive oil," which has developed such a following that some supermarkets now carry bottles costing $30 a liter. But while other fancy food items like balsamic vinegar can fetch up to $300 a bottle, few people see any reason to pay more than a few dollars for a plain bar of chocolate.

The built-in price limit is particularly problematic for the chocolate industry this year, because cocoa costs twice as much as it did last year. A combination of factors - including violence in Ivory Coast, where about 40 percent of the world's cocoa is grown - has sent commodity prices skyrocketing in recent months.

Even worse for high-end chocolatiers, some of the world's greatest cocoa is downright impossible to get a hold of right now: It's sitting in the ports of Venezuela, where a general strike has frozen exports for the past two months.

Fancy chocolate makers are hoping the lingo can help justify the higher prices of their products, and encourage buyers to think of candy bars as gourmet food on par with caviar and truffles. Indeed, some specialty companies say they will have to boost prices by as much as 10 percent during the next few months. (Prices on mere mortal chocolate, like Oreos and Hershey's, have already gone up.)

The Venezuelan company El Rey has been particularly aggressive in marketing the pedigree of its candy. Wrappers tout "Venezuelan single bean origin," meaning they don't blend different beans as most other makers do. Promotional materials read like wine reviews, extolling virtues such as "fruity acidity and long linger on the palate" and "interesting hints of apricot and plum."

But does haute chocolate actually taste any better? Our own panel of chocoholics differed widely on that point. By far the most divisive hunk of candy was a 3.5-ounce bar of Michel Cluizel Premier Cru de Plantation Hacienda "Los Ancones," which cost us $4.75. Reactions ranged from "yuck" to "wow."

Our outside chocolate expert, Clay Gordon of PureOrigin.com, says this variety is made with a single, strong-flavored bean rather than the subtler blend in most chocolate. (For more taste-test results, see accompanying chart.) Truly decadent dark chocolate uses much more cocoa than the milk chocolate sold in vending machines.

The Food and Drug Administration mandates that milk chocolate contain a minimum of 10 percent cocoa. (The rest of the bar is mostly just sugar and milk.) By contrast, the most prestigious bars use huge amounts of cocoa - as much as 99 percent of the total bar - and tout those percentages on the packaging.

Decoding the new lingo requires some knowledge of cocoa beans.

While most are grown in Africa, the "flavor beans" - the ones that impart the most powerful chocolate taste - mostly come from Latin American countries including Venezuela and Ecuador. Criollo beans, the finest, are pricey and rare because the trees are high-maintenance and produce lower yields. But about 90 percent of all beans are Forasteros, which are easier to grow but not as flavorful.

But bean type tells only part of the story, according to connoisseurs, who insist that the specific region where the beans are grown is of great importance. "Just like in wine, there can be a good side of the hill and a bad side of the hill," says Clay Gordon, a professional chocolate taster. That's why many chocolates now specify the region, or even the precise plantation, where the beans grew.

Terms like "premier cru," for instance, are supposed to mean only the best beans from a particular "terroir," or region, were used. Single-bean origin indicates that, unlike most chocolate, beans from different countries weren't blended. Another French word that pops up a lot is "couverture." Translation: baking chocolate.

However, some of the most important information on the wrapper is buried in the ingredients list. Connoisseurs say cocoa should be listed first, and they look for real vanilla (not artificial vanillin). Cocoa butter is preferred, too: Milk fat and lecithin are often used as less expensive substitutes. Everything else on the package "is marketing speak," Mr. Gordon says.

Indeed, some consumers are baffled by the lingo. Dennison Lee, an engineer in New York, recently got a tip on chocolate from an online food chat room. When the bars arrived, he read on the label that they were "made with a hundred percent single variety premium Venezuelan cacao." "'Venezuelan' doesn't mean a thing to me," Mr. Lee says. But one thing's for sure: "It's certainly not Hershey's." --- Tasting the Good Stuff A "bold, earthy and complex" candy bar? To see if we could discern what the packaging promises, we snarfed down a half-dozen chocolate bars. The panel was a hardened pool of chocoholics, from the Wall Street Journal's managing editor to wine columnists Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, as well as chocolate expert Clay Gordon of PureOrigin.com.

Chocolate: El Rey Gran Saman Dark Chocolate Carenero Superior 70 percent The Marketing Speak: "A bold, earthy and complex dark chocolate with ... refreshing acidity." What We Said: Most of us disliked the texture, calling it "chalky," "gritty" and "crumbly." The Expert Explains: Simple bad luck: This company is known for fine chocolates, but we managed to buy a bar that had been damaged and got dried out. (The maker says it must have been improperly stored in the shop.) Chocolate: Michel Cluizel Premier Cru de Planatation Hacienda "Los Ancones"67 percent The Marketing Speak: "The first note is liquorice root, followed by berries and a drawn-out finish of green olive, current, and apricot." What We Said: By far the most divisive bar. One of us said the "sour, lemony taste makes you cringe." For others it was a "favorite." The Expert Explains: When chocolate is made with beans from a particular region, as the case here, the flavor can be very specific. (Most chocolates are blends.) Some people like the strong flavors, others don't.

Chocolate: Valrhona Caraibe 66 percent The Marketing Speak: "Aromatic and long in the mouth ...

delicate savours of almonds and roasted coffee." What We Said: John and Dorothy found it "interesting," with "deeply buried tastes" that evolved in the mouth.

The Expert Explains: "One of the natures of fine chocolate is the layers of complexity. A fine bean will be interesting and complex." Chocolate: Cacao Barry Origine Rare Cuba 70 percent The Marketing Speak: "How can one define its powerful, lingering taste of mingled smoke and undergrowth?" What We Said: Most of us enjoyed this one, finding it "buttery" and with a "dry finish." The Expert Explains: How can anything be both "buttery" and "dry"? Because it's a "couverture," or baking chocolate, it has more cocoa solids, which can impart a "dry" finish. But its high cocoa butter content gives it richness.

Chocolate: Hershey's Special Dark The Marketing Speak: "Mildly sweet chocolate." What We Said: A sugar bomb - nearly everyone found it "too sweet." Except one diehard fan who said "only thing missing was peanut butter." The Expert Explains: Sugar is the first ingredient listed, a surefire sign it's extra-sweet. Ingredients also included milk fat (a less expensive replacement for cocoa butter) and vanillin, an artificial vanilla flavoring. Hershey's responds that it's the best-selling dark chocolate in the country.

• Eating Chocolate Like a Pro As if anyone really needs help with this. But here's how chocolate snobs do it:

Step 1: The Sheen Test: Shimmer is good, chalky is bad - just like makeup. This Michel Cluizel bar glimmered nicely.

Step 2: The Snap Test: Break it. You want a crisp snap: Think Kit Kat.

Step 3: The Sniff Test: Smell it like a cigar. The packaging on this bar promised licorice and berries.

Step 4: The Gritty Test: Pop a piece and "worry" it on the roof of your mouth. The smoother the better.

Step 5: Eat it: If it tastes good, ignore steps 1 through 4.