Chocolate Tasting

With all the wine influence in and surrounding the bay area, wine tastings are everywhere. Matt and I have mentioned several times that it would be much better if they were chocolate tastings instead. When I spotted a deal for chocolate tasting I was all over it even though I wasn't sure what to expect. Let me just say, it was a lot of fun! Not only did we get to try pure, high quality chocolate, but we learned a lot about it as well. The tasting was done at Alegio Chocolate in Berkeley. We tried about 10 different selections including a plain cocoa bean (not the best tasting thing). I never realized how many flavors there are to chocolate! We learned about some of the things companies do to make chocolate cheaper, like removing the cocoa butter to sell to companies and replacing it with something cheaper, and adding lots of vanilla. We also learned that Michael Pollan and Steve Jobs are/were regulars of Alegio. Not so important, but Matt's read some of Pollan's books so there was a small discussion about them and food quality now days. I would love to eat this kind of chocolate more often, but at about $12 for less than 2 ounces, I think I would go broke pretty fast :) But it's definitely worth it now and then. Afterwards we even decided to go to the store and buy a few different kinds of chocolate and have our own little tasting at home! This was a fun activity for us both and would even be great for Valentine's Day!

some of our goods..