Chocolate Tasting Notes

Inspired by some recent articles in the NYT, Andrea and I have been doing a bit of chocolate tasting lately. We're starting with "plain" dark chocolates in order to establish a good baseline and educate ourselves. I'm going to record these so that we can refer to them later.

Things we've tasted so far, enhanced by my inability to assign names to flavors:

1. Valrhona Le Noir 56% and 71%: This is smooth, round, and subtle. Compared to the other things we tasted it's almost boring, but everything is so nicely integrated that it somehow ends up being interesting. Andrea has a clear preference for the 71% bar; I lean very slightly towards the lighter one.
   
2. Scharffen Berger 72% and 80%: We did not like these at all. There's a chalkiness to the texture and flavor that was unpleasant and some "off" tasting flavor notes that were just not right.
   
3. Caro dark: This isn't as smooth as the Valrhona, but it's nicely rounded and there are all kinds of wonderful spicy notes in there. It's like this is what the Scharffen Berger is trying to be.