It's easy to love chocolate. (What's not to like about instant gratification?) But Vancouver writer Eagranie Yuh also thinks it's worth getting to know more about chocolate. This might seem like a tough assignment but she's encouraging people to explore and expand their chocolate palate and she's come up with a fun way to do it. She's recently produced The Chocolate Tasting Kit. It includes an informative booklet about what goes into making good chocolate, but the main feature is her Chocolate Tasting Notes. She invites you to buy a whole bunch of chocolate and invite some friends over to compare notes of why not all addictions are a bad thing....
Wine experts are sommeliers. Beer experts are cicerones. What's a chocolate expert called?
I’ve heard the term “chocolate sommelier” thrown around but it doesn’t really work for me. People often refer to me as a chocolate expert, which is fine, though my concern is that “expert” implies I don’t have anything left to learn. Most of the time I say “chocolate educator.”
Why does chocolate lend itself so well to the concept of a tasting party?
One of the best ways to try chocolate have a whole bunch of them, side by side. It’s an ideal way to find out that one bar tastes fruity, for example, while another one tastes earthy. Doing all those comparisons usually means getting a bunch of bars… and then it only makes sense to invite a bunch of people over to share them. The other part is that it’s fun. I mean, I could sit around and taste a bunch of bars in silence, by myself. And sometimes I do, when I really need to concentrate. But tasting anything – wine, cheese, beer, coffee – is more fun when you’re doing it with likeminded friends.
If you were to hold the perfect chocolate-tasting party, which five people, living or dead, would you invite?
I have an ongoing dinner party list, and I think my hypothetical dinner party guests are fair game for chocolate chocolate tasting. My current list includes Tina Fey, Lewis Carroll, Quentin Blake, Judi Dench, and Joel Plaskett.
What chocolate would you have them taste?
Do I have to pick just one? I’m a big fan of Amedei’s 9, which is a crazy-balanced blend of nine single-origin chocolates, but I also have a stockpile of Michel Cluizel’s Concepcion bar that I save for special occasions. Concepcion is a plantation in Venezuela that was taken over by squatters a few years ago, and you can’t get the beans – or the chocolate – any more.
Why does Vancouver have so many quality chocolate makers?
Well, we’ve got both chocolate makers and chocolatiers. Chocolate makers actually make chocolate from the cacao bean, and there are only a handful – East Van Roasters is probably the best example. Chocolatiers buy chocolate and turn them into bonbons, and we’ve got plenty. And we’ve got great ones, ones that win awards on the world stage, as Beta5 did in the International Chocolate Awards.
Vancouver’s pretty food obsessed, and for a while that was limited to restaurants but I think people are seeing that there’s quality and innovation happening in sweets, especially chocolate. So we have good palates, and pretty adventurous palates. On the chocolatier side, there are such great ingredients here, and a real drive for local, seasonal, sustainable… all those buzzwords that typically translate into good products.
Where in Vancouver should the Easter Bunny shop?
Oh, where to begin? Beta5 does beautiful work that’s almost too good to eat. It’s hard to go wrong with either Thomas Haas or Thierry, and new kids on the block Chez Christophe (in Burnaby) and Temper Pastry (in West Van) are great additions to Vancouver’s chocolate scene. I have a soft spot for Chocolaterie de la Nouvelle France, a tiny shop just off Main Street. It’s like walking into Paris, and while the products are deceptively simple, they’re extremely well done.
Writer Eagranie Yuh is a grand jury member and Canadian event partner with the International Chocolate Awards. Enter to win a Chocolate Tasting Kit at WEVancouver.com/contests
