Interestingly, the most important chocolate terms start with the letter C!

Here are the 7 most useful terms you need to know in order to speak like a chocolate expert:

1. Conching

Chocolate’s smooth texture and refined flavours, are achieved thanks to the conching machine, where the chocolate paste is heated, stirred, and sort of kneaded, for as much as four days!

A minimum of 12 hours is standard in the chocolate industry.

The Swiss manufacturer Rodolphe Lindt invented this technique in 1879 (In French: Lissage).

The ground beans are stirred and blended together with sugar and other ingredients, until a smooth, homogeneous paste is ready to be poured into molds.

Conching combines all the ingredients into a unified mass, and eliminates volatile flavours, unpleasant odors, and bitterness.

Tasting the paste straight right out of the conching machine, at a chocolate factory, is an unforgettable experience, that we very much recommend trying if you get the chance.

Photo: Simon Pearson via Flickr

2. Cacao Belt

Cacao trees can only grow within 20° north and south of the Equator.

This geographical area can be imagined as a belt circling our planet.

Within this area are the original cacao growing countries like Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela; and thanks to globalization cacao now grows also in Africa and Asia – mainly in Ghana, the Cote D’Ivoire, Madagascar, and Sri Lanka.

3. Criollo

Criollo is a type of cacao tree that grows mainly in Venezuela. Most chocolate experts consider it to produce the best quality beans, with the most delicate flavour.

Criollo trees are quite rare, also because they are very vulnerable to disease.

Therefore, Criollo beans are more expensive, but we believe it is worth the investment when making top quality chocolate.

Photo: 3 types of cacao pods (=trees): Criollo, Trinitario & Forastero. Source: Wikipedia

4. Couverture

For dipping and coating pralines and other confectioneries, like candied fruit, it’s best to use chocolate with a higher minimum fat content, of around 35% cocoa butter.

This thin glossy mass is called Couvertour.

When your teeth encounter a thinly-covered praline, made by hand, you immediately feel the difference, and can better enjoy the right balance of flavours in your mouth.

5. Tempering

There is something magical about tempering – like watching a science experiment – seeing how cacao butter is transformed into a stable crystal form.

The process happens through alternate heating and cooling in very specific timing, to a point where cacao butter sets at its most stable point.

Tempering helps make the chocolate look smooth and glossy, and brings the chocolate to the exact stability, so it would break by your teeth in the most pleasurable way.

6. Gianduja

A paste made of chocolate blended with finely ground hazelnuts, it was said to be invented by 19th-century producers to cut cost of chocolate candy.

But no one can deny that cocoa and hazelnuts are a match made in heaven; Gianduja pralines tend to be best sellers.

7. Cru

The word Cru comes from the wine world, close in meaning to the word Terroir = the environment in which the plant is grown.

When talking about cacao, Cru is used to indicate beans from trees from specific areas. For example, Valrhona uses “Cru” with Caraïbe (Caribbean), Manjari (Madagascar), and Jivara (South America), to tell consumers where the beans were grown.

Expert tasters can learn and feel the characteristics of different Cru’s, and identify acidity, ripeness, and traces of charcoal and fruit, just like wine connoisseurs.

Photo: Papua New Guinea Praline by IKA Chocolate, made out of single origin Papuan cocoa beans.

So many factors influence the piece of chocolate you taste:

The type of trees from which the beans came, and their level of ripeness, the harvest, fermentation technique, drying, roasting, refining, conching and tempering, and then, the recipe and skills of the chocolatier.

Understanding how truly fabulous chocolate is made is a journey, one that is never too late to embark on.

Feeling all set to join a chocolate tasting club? Or want to start sharing fine chocolate reviews?

How about visiting an international chocolate industry event? Choose out of dozens of 2018 chocolate events listed here.

Its creation was inspired by a legendary princess.  A woman who was loved by many men, some of them to (their) death.

“Queen Emma” they called her. The Samoan / American Emma was considered the most beautiful woman in Papua New Guinea around the turn of the last centuries. Her mother’s bloodline was related to the Moli tribe and Emma was recognized by the Malietoa as a princess.

Born Emma Eliza Coe (1850, died 1913) she was a business woman and plantation owner.

They say her motto was – to sin and be forgiven.

She was a lover “to die for”; passionate, powerful. And four of her lovers did indeed die, tragically. She might have had something to do with their deaths, according to highly circulated rumours.

Famously, her second husband, the German Paul Kolbe, 20 years her younger, died shortly after she found out he was cheating on her in Monte Carlo. She died two days later.

Emma was as beautiful as her homeland still is.

She lived in the town of Kokopo, strung along the edge of Blanche Bay, surrounded by five towering volcanoes. The crusty dark earth is highly fertile, rich in minerals. One of those volcanos is still active, erupting every few years, perhaps with what once thought of the locals as the wrath of the gods.

Emma was said to be prone to angry eruptions as well. She was, in her day to day, a shrewd administrator, “Queen of Commerce”, a clever businesswoman who helped her family and community flourish. She was known as a heady woman, a celebrated socialite who knew how to throw a good party. A passionate woman, loud and energetic, never afraid of what people might say about her and her choices.

Ika was immediately drawn to Queen Emma’s story, while researching notable lovers’ stories, whose lives are intertwined with chocolate.

Emma was a lover of life. Her strong character was the inspiration for the new limited edition of exceptional single origin chocolate that Ika has created.

The dark praline contains cacao from the fields of Papua. The beans were dried over open fire, and you can feel a touch of smoke in the creamy rich chocolate filling.

Thin, almost unnoticed slivers of coal lay on top of the praline, enhancing its flavor. The coal embellishment gives away a visual clue for the smoky note. The deep aroma adds to the sensory experience of tasting this superior single origin chocolate. It is a unique expression of passionate love for chocolate, love of life, and giving.

Pictures: [clockwise] Emma Forsayth | Tavurvur volcano & Sunset in Papua New Guinea – the romantic vibe is helped by the unique crimson colours of the sky at sunset – photos by Raz Sherbelis | Ika’s praline, photo by Shiran Carmel