SOUP TO NUTS: Meredith Goad

Holy cacao!

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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It was one of the nicest warnings I've ever received.

And it came from a guy with one of the best jobs in the world: chocolate consultant.

Mark Canizaro, a chocolate expert from Washington state, is in Maine to do, among other things, chocolate tastings. I attended one of his tastings Saturday at O'Naturals on Exchange Street, along with a dozen or so other local chocoholics.

Canizaro began with this little warning: "Everyone's going to have the chocolate equivalent of 25 chocolate bars."

But, he added, "it will be the sugar equivalent of one."

As the old saying goes, it's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

Canizaro likes to say that the word "chocolate" has no meaning. That's because when most people think of chocolate, they think of various forms of candy, not cacao - the stuff that makes what we think of as chocolate, well, chocolate.

In case you haven't noticed, companies that make premium chocolate bars are making them with higher levels of cacao and less sugar.

Chocolate aficionadoes like Canizaro can actually distinguish between bars, much like wine experts do with the beverage.

We sampled 18 chocolate bars Saturday - that's right, 18! - that ranged in cacao content from 10 percent to 99 percent. They were broken up and passed around the room one by one on a plate.

"I'm going to let each of you decide how big a piece you want," Canizaro said.

He is a dangerous, dangerous man.

Each of us also had a glass of water and access to bread to nibble on between "courses."

Canizaro advised us to hold the chocolate in our hands for a moment to warm it up a little before popping it in our mouths. Canizaro cupped his in his hands and blew on it a little first.

An important question: Should we chew or savor?

Canizaro said he chews and holds the chocolate for a bit on the roof of his mouth.

We started with a baseline - a basic Hershey's chocolate bar - and the reactions were predictable. It was very sweet, and a little waxy. Hershey's contains just 10 percent cacao, the lowest amount companies can use by law and still call their candy chocolate. Canizaro noted that a friend calls it "homeopathic chocolate."

Think you're getting a chocolate fix when you have that afternoon Snickers bar? It contains just 1.5 percent cacao, Canizaro said.

Toward the end of the evening, after we had sampled more than a dozen bars and we were all flying on a magic chocolate carpet ride, Canizaro looked into our glazed eyes and confessed that he palmed his piece of Hershey's bar. Faked eating it. No fair.

Most of what we tried during the tasting was the anti-Hershey, bars containing lots of cacao and a little sugar. As we popped the morsels into our mouths, Canizaro educated us on where chocolate comes from, how it's made, how to store it, and how to distinguish variations in flavor.

We learned that chocolate you don't drink is a European invention, and that the Aztecs added hot chiles to their chocolate before guzzling it cold and running off to war in a narcotic, chocoholic haze.

We also learned that it's a myth that chocolate contains caffeine. Chocolate's buzz comes from a chemical called theobromine, a mild anti-depressant.

One of the most striking things to me was how similar a chocolate tasting is to a wine tasting, down to the beautiful and funky chocolate bar labels that look like they were pried off a bottle of wine. You learn to detect that little note of cherry that comes from Venezuelan Criollio beans, or the spiciness added by Trinitario beans from Trinidad. You learn what a spoiled chocolate bar, the victim of extreme temperatures or wreckless shipping and handling, tastes like.

Chocolove bars (70 percent cacao) are creamy but don't have a lot of depth. Santander (70 percent) is fruity and has a touch of smokiness. The flavor of Dolfin (88 percent), a Belgian bar, starts slow but builds. There's an inherent sweetness in the cacao, but a little spiciness, too.

Canizaro gushed about Grenada bars (70 percent) but noted they have not quite been up to snuff recently because the plantation where the cacao is grown has been devastated by two hurricanes, and so the company has been using some Costa Rican cacao beans.

Still, the bar was very smooth, and carried a lot of "drama" in the mouth, as Canizaro put it. It was fruity, smoky and spicy in succession, and the flavors went on forever.

Here's a note from my reporter's notebook after tasting the Grenada bar, when I was well into my buzz: ONLY HALFWAY THROUGH!!!

My personal favorite was the Pralus Claudio Corallo Brut de Sao Tome (75 percent), a bar that contained "nibs," or tiny pieces of cacao that give it a little crunch.

This bar contained no cocoa butter and comes closest to the taste of real chocolate, Canizaro said.

If you'd like to try this yourself, Canizaro is available for tastings through early March. To book him, call (206) 579-4683 or e-mail mrk@xocoatl.org. His Web site is www.xocoatl.org.

A booking costs $350 for up to 20 people. More than half the cost goes toward the chocolate.

That brings up the downside of a chocolate tasting. If you get hooked, most of the really good bars cost at least $7 to $9. A 160-gram bar of my favorite, the Pralus, costs $13.

Oh, well. It's still cheaper than drugs or a Prada handbag.

MORE SWEETNESS

Dean Bingham probably didn't realize he was following in the footsteps of the Aztecs when he added cayenne to his chocolate truffles. But it's become one of the specialties of his fledgling truffle business.

Bingham is a Portland architect who has started a chocolate truffle business on the side called "Dean's Sweets" (www.deanssweets.com).

Bingham has long been a dessert fanatic - his chocolate-colored apron says "Eat Dessert First" - who was well-known among friends for his almond butter crunch candy and peppermint ice cream. He began making truffles three or four years ago, and his friends urged him to try and sell them.

Today he makes them in his Portland kitchen, dipping each ball of creamy ganache in dark Belgian chocolate that's heated in a small tempering kettle. The centers are made with chocolate that has a 56 percent cacao content, and the coating contains 70 percent cacao.

Bingham started with a rum flavor, and now makes a variety of the confections during "truffle season" - Oct. 15 through Mother's Day. His repertoire includes single-malt Scotch truffles, brandy truffles, and flavors such as raspberry, coffee, ginger and cayenne.

All of his truffles are nut-free, in deference to friends who are allergic to nuts.

Ginger - Bingham uses ginger purée - is my favorite. I also tried the cayenne, which leaves a soft burn in the back of the throat. The cayenne truffle has grown hotter over the years.

"I had people tell me that they'd like it a lot hotter, and I thought that was crazy," he said. "But the ones that I'm making now, these are probably four times the cayenne I started with, plus some other secret ingredients. The glow lingers a lot longer with these than the originals."

Bingham's architectural training sometimes spills over into his new business. Bingham said he tends to lay out the truffles in nice, neat rows, "and I also tend to count, even after I've already counted them three times."

"I spent a lot of time looking for packaging that would show them off," he said.

If you'd like to try his truffles, they'll be featured this Friday at a free Italian wine and chocolate truffle tasting at Rosemont Market, 559 Brighton Ave., in Portland. The event is from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. and will include a selection of Italian red and white wines, including dessert wines to pair with chocolate.

For more information, contact the market at 774-8129.

Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:

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