How I learnt to taste chocolate properly thanks to TV expert Alex Hutchinson

Alex is best known for her regular appearances on Channel 5 series The Wonderful World of Chocolate. She combines a peerless knowledge of her subject with a passion for making history accessible to all audiences. She is currently the archivist for Yorkshire Tea, Taylor’s coffee, and Betty’s Tea Rooms.

What Alex Hutchinson doesn’t know about chocolate isn’t worth knowing.

She tells me to hold my nose and then let a piece of the chocolate melt on my tongue.

"Recognise how sweet it is then let go of your nose and you get a woosh of chocolate flavour although realising what you are tasting is a lot of flavourings,” says Alex and she’s right.

You do this to recognise the difference between your sense of taste and your olfaction.

“There are three things your brain interprets as sense of taste,” explains Alex. “There are your taste buds on your tongue which are the fives tastes we know about sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umamri. Then there is olfaction which is flavours like buttery flloral fruity malty then there your trigeminal nerve – senses heat and astringency so things like chilli, menthol, horseradish and garlic but also the tannins in a red wine.”

"When you are tasting chocolate it is important to understand those three things. We shouldn’t just be tasting sugar we should be spending time trying to taste the chocolate."

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Then came the 100 per cent chocolate – no sugar, no flavour, no milk – just cocoa solids. “For some people it is quite startling. It’s important when we are tasting chocolate to learn what’s chocolate, what’s vanilla flavouring and what’s sugar. Once you’ve learnt to separate them all out when you get some really good chocolate you recognise it." Alex gives me a cup of warm water in case I need to wash away the flavor quickly, due tot he amount of fats in chocolate you need warm water not cold, she says.

"There’s bitterness and astringency which is being detected by your trigeminal nerve. Sugar takes away the astringency.” I don’t find it awful, but I couldn’t eat more than a piece and not sure I’ll be buying a bar of it.

But even the same amount of cocoa in a chocolate doesn’t mean it will taste the same.

I tried two 70 per cent chocolate bars, Lindt and Green & Blacks, but the taste, flavour and texture were completely different due to the amount of time they have been conched

Conching is a process that all chocolate goes through and was discovered by Rudloph Lindt, a chocolatier in the 1800s.

It entails the continuous mixing, grinding, and kneading of chocolate mass over a prolonged period. It produces chocolate with superior aroma and melting characteristics compared to other processes used at that time.

The Lindt chocolate company states that Lindt (perhaps mistakenly) allowed a mixer containing chocolate to run over a weekend (or possibly overnight, according to other variants of the possibly apocryphal story). Upon returning to the device, Lindt recognised the final product to have a less granular texture and greater shine than conventionally processed chocolate of the time, which was generally gritty when solidified owing to the presence of non-ideal cocoa butter crystals. Lindt's invention made the mass-production of chocolate bars more practical.

Conching reduces the natural acidity in the chocolate so not only is Lindt smoother and silkier it is less acidic that the Green & Blacks equivilent. The conching changes not only the texture, look but the taste as well.

Ninety five per cent of the world’s cocoa is what’s known as ‘bulk cocoa’. These are cocoa beans which have been grown for maximum profit and are processed by manufacturers in a way which disguises the naturally occurring flavours to produce a chocolate product which tastes just the same as the chocolate product the manufacturer always makes and they are what are used the majority of high street chocolate bars.

"It’s the equivilant of going into the wine section of a supermarket, going past the bottles that says Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and then one that just says ‘red’ from grapes of various countries – that’s the bulk grape, this is bulk cocoa,” explains Alex.

“There are broadly three types of cocoa tree. Of those varieties there is one that has a high yield but not a fantastic taste, one that’s hybrid with a high yield and a better taste and the best, the gold standard which is more expensive to grow and with the best flavour is Criollo and that’s what we use in the Cru Sauvage.”

Then we came to Bettys chocolates. "Bettys chocolate is some of the best; they use Felchin’s Swiss chocolate," says Alex.

It’s not surprising really as Bettys was founded by Frederick Belmont self-proclaimed ‘Chocolate Specialist’ and it was no idle boast. Before opening the first Bettys Café Tea Rooms in Harrogate in 1919, the resourceful young orphan trained extensively in the art of chocolate making in his native Switzerland, in Marseille and in Paris. More than a century later, Bettys craft chocolatiers maintain Frederick’s high standards by combining traditional skills with present-day artistry.

"They are conched for 72 hours compared to your cheap high street milk chocolate bar that might be conched for six hours. "

But Alex’s favourite – and quickly becoming mine – is the Cru Sauvage.

"They are made from cocoa beans grown on wild cocoa trees in the Amazon in Bolivia and harvested by indigenous people who know where these wild cocoa trees are on islands in the middle of a river somewhere. They are very difficult to get to and they often have to canoe out to get to them so they can pretty much charge what they like. Felchins pays 30 per cent more than Fairtrade on average and they in the top five per cent of cocoa beans. These are the absolute best in the world.”

Alex fell into chocolate by accident.

"I always wanted to be an archivist I spent six years working in libraries and I was also working at York Minster and my intention was to be a mediaevil archivist. I got the opportunity to work a couple of days at Rowntrees and when they found out I was an archivist they asked if I would help sort out their archives. I was only supposed to be there six months but I ended up being there 11 years and never got back to my mediaevil manuscripts.”

She moved to Betty’s and Taylors a year ago and is on a mission to help us appreciate chocolate not only the taste but also what goes into the chocolate we often take for granted and the reality of how a sack of cocoa is harvested.

"We take it for granted like a sack of potatoes, but this is a luxury good that comes from near the equator. The idea that we treat it like grocery product we buy everyday with our loaf of break and milk but it couldn’t come from further away.

“So many people don’t get the chance to taste and appreciate good chocolate. If you are used to buying chocolate bar for pound and the you see chocolate that is much more expensive people don’t realise it is an utterly different product.”