There is a literal sweet spot for me, totally dependent on my taste and mood of the day where dark chocolate is just dark enough that fruity noted of the chocolate shine through the bitterness. Which is not to say that I don’t also love milk chocolate, sour milk chocolate aka Hershey’s, and white chocolate.
Some of that stuff is only good to use in baking or otherwise as an ingredient.
There are some dark chocolates that are meant for dégustation as well but usually a bit lower on the cacao % and with complex flavour profiles kind of like wine.
American chocolates (like Hershey’s) tend to taste more sour because they have more sugar and less cacao. The milk also tends to have a more butyric acid taste for some reason. Perhaps the difference is how the milk is treated, but those are trade secrets.
IIRC, this “accident” is simply because chocolate producers figured out it’s cheaper to make the milk slightly taste like vomit (something the Americans apparently didn’t mind too much) than cooling it properly. I think nowadays that wouldn’t really fly but back then cheaper chocolate was maybe so desirable that consumers didn’t mind the weird taste.
Adam Ragusea did a great video about the history of Hershey’s and how that flavor probably came to be so prevalent. Very worth the watch. youtu.be/J44svaQc5WY
They’re not wrong for the most part. Good white chocolate has cocoa butter, but a lot of the cheaper stuff substitutes this with various oils. No cocoa in sight.
I tried many brands of chocolate. I lived in SF for a while so I had access to the ghirardelli factory and their chocolates. I even did a chocolate tasting tour ones with brands I’ve never even heard of before. And despite all of that my favorite chocolate is still lindor by lindt. And even then I like their white chocolate the most.
I like both. Not the super dark bitter stuff, but stuff on the level of Hershey dark is fine. Not saying I’m a Hershey fanboy, but that’s a reference common enough to understand.
Both are better in small doses IMO. White is too sweet, and dark isn’t sweet enough to eat a whole lot at a time.
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