Learn about dark chocolate

Buying

1 guide

Source label: cacao criollo porcelana, Slow Food, La Guajira, Colombia. A pile of harvested green and purple-brown pods in shade.

How to read a dark chocolate wrapper

Five lines on the back of a bar tell you nearly everything. Here is what each one means, and which ones matter.

7 min

Styles and types

1 guide

Source label: Trinitario (one of the three pod groups after Lachenaud 2014). A ridged pink-orange pod on the trunk. Only 820x1154 px, below the size target; kept because it is the only variety-labelled Trinitario found.

The best types of dark chocolate, and the ones we reach for

Six styles of dark bar worth knowing, what each one tastes like, and a real bar to start with for every one.

8 min1 video

The basics

2 guides

Ripe magenta-red cacao pods growing straight off the trunk, with young pods and flowers, at the Maison du cacao, Guadeloupe.

How cacao goes from pod to roasted bean

Chocolate flavor is mostly made on the farm, in a wooden box, over six days. Then the maker's roaster decides which of it you get to taste.

8 min1 video

A red-and-yellow pod split open: pink-purple fresh beans under translucent white pulp, among whole yellow and dark pods. Phone photo with camera metadata.

How cacao nibs become a smooth, snappy bar

A gritty, dull or bendy bar went wrong in one of three steps. Grinding, conching and tempering, and what each one does to the square in your hand.

7 min2 videos

Where it comes from

1 guide

Pink and cream cacao flowers growing straight from the bark of the trunk, Cau chocolate village, Bali.

Cacao origins and how they taste

Two 70% bars from different countries can taste like strangers. A tour of the places on a dark chocolate wrapper, with a real bar for each.

8 min2 videos

Pairing

1 guide

Ripe yellow, orange and red cacao pods lying on green grass. Phone photo with camera metadata.

How to taste dark chocolate, and what to pair with it

Most people chew a great square in four seconds and miss the best part. A five-minute way to taste dark chocolate properly, and what to pair with it.

7 min1 video

Keeping it

1 guide

A pod cut across, its white pulp-covered beans standing up out of the orange shell, El Trapiche, Costa Rica.

How to store chocolate, and what that white film means

A warm car or a cold fridge can turn a $14 bar gray in a day. Where to keep a good bar, why the fridge is a bad idea, and whether a bloomed bar is still worth eating.

6 min

Watch

Every film

**How Miami’s Chocolate Master Creates the Perfect Bar of Chocolate: Handmade**EaterCarolina Quijano of Exquisito Chocolates makes a bar by hand, from roasting and winnowing to grinding, tempering and molding.

**How One of New York's Best Chocolate Factories Makes 5000 Award-Winning Bars a Day: Dan Does**EaterA full day inside Raaka's Brooklyn factory, from beans to about 5,000 wrapped bars.

**Brad Makes Chocolate in Ecuador: Part 1 | It's Alive | Bon Appétit**Bon AppétitEcuadorian cacao farms: cutting pods, filling fermentation boxes and sun drying the beans.

Words worth knowing

The whole glossary

Bean-to-bar: A maker who starts from fermented, dried cacao beans and does every step after that, from roasting to molding.
Bittersweet: A US label for chocolate with at least 35 percent chocolate liquor. Same rule as semisweet.
Bloom: A white or gray film on chocolate. Fat bloom comes from heat, sugar bloom from moisture. Cosmetic, safe to eat.
Cacao: The tree, the pod and the beans. Many makers say cacao before roasting and cocoa after.
Cacao nibs: Roasted, cracked cacao beans with the shell removed. Crunchy, bitter, fruity, and the raw material of every bar.
CCN-51: A high-yield cacao clone bred in Naranjal, Ecuador. Farmers rely on it. Makers find its flavor hard to make fine.
Chocolate liquor: Ground cacao nibs, liquid from their own fat. It is 100 percent cacao, and the name is centuries old.
Cocoa butter: The fat in cacao, about half of a nib. Added to bars for a silkier melt. Best when pressed from the same beans.

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