Practise on us
Free Chocolate Tastings
Entry and tastings are free at Margaret River, the Swan Valley and our Perth City Store. Work your way from lightest to boldest: white, milk, dark, ruby, then the flavoured favourites.
The Ultimate Chocolate Guide
Taste it like you mean it.
How to taste, what to look for, how to melt it at home, and 3,000 years of chocolate in one sitting.
Like wine, fine chocolate is best tasted with all five senses. Slow down. It's worth it.
We've been hand-making chocolate in Western Australia since 1999. This is everything we'd tell you across the tasting counter, minus the queue. Start with the five senses, then go wherever your sweet tooth takes you.
Simple to read. Hard to stop at one square.
01 — How to taste
Five senses. One square.
Look. Enjoy the depth of colour and the gloss. Dark chocolate has a deep, warm colour, and a broken edge of good chocolate should look like tree bark.
Touch. Feel its smoothness. Quality chocolate starts to melt within a minute in the hand.
Listen. Dark chocolate snaps like a twig. Milk and white give a softer, muffled break.
Smell. Close your eyes. Good chocolate has a rich aroma with a hint of natural vanilla.
Taste. Let a small piece melt on your tongue and notice the waves of flavour, from flowers and citrus to red berries and chestnut.
02 — Know your chocolate
The five colours of chocolate.
Cacao % is simply the share of the chocolate that comes from the cocoa bean. Here's how ours line up.
Dark
More cocoa mass, less sugar, no milk powder. Our standard dark 56% cacao is full-bodied and beautifully balanced. Like it darker? We make a 70% too.
Milk
When you picture chocolate, this is the one. Smooth, creamy, with sweet caramel note, made with 36% cacao.
White
Cocoa butter, sugar, milk and vanilla, with no cocoa solids. Milky, creamy and mellow.
Ruby
Naturally pink, with no colouring or fruit flavouring. Berry-like, slightly tart, neither milky nor bitter.
Caramel
Caramelised sugar and milk. Toffee, butter and cream, with a hint of salt.
70% Dark
Our sixth chocolate, for when standard dark isn't quite dark enough.
03 — At a glance
Taste, flavour, mouthfeel.
Three words people use as one. Pull them apart and you'll taste more.
Taste
What your tongue picks up: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami.
Flavour
Taste plus aroma: fruity, nutty, floral, spicy.
Mouthfeel
Creaminess, richness, melt and texture.
What shapes the taste
Recipe
The balance of cocoa, cocoa butter and sugar.
Origin
The soil and climate the cocoa grew in.
Process
Fermentation, roasting and conching.
04 — In depth
Find your flavour style.
Most chocolate falls into one of five broad flavour styles. Taste a few side by side and you'll soon know which way you lean. These are our own names, so feel free to invent yours.
- Creamy and mild. Gentle, comforting, easy to love.
- Buttery, nutty and caramel. Warm and rounded, like a good biscuit.
- Fruity and bright. Often sweet-sour, with a lively finish.
- Bold and earthy. Deep, with dried fruit notes.
- Floral or spiced. Perfumed, with a strong bitterness.
Never let water touch your chocolate. White chocolate is especially quick to seize.
What is tempering?
Tempering is why good chocolate shines and snaps. It's the controlled heating and cooling that sets cocoa butter into the right crystals. Streaky chocolate, chocolates stuck in moulds, or chocolate that won't harden usually point to a tempering problem.
Try it at home
- Use a metal bowl.
- Keep every drop of water away from the chocolate.
- Don't cool chocolate in the fridge to speed things up.
- Use plain chocolate rather than flavoured. Our Pastelles are made for melting.
Storage and bloom
Keep chocolate cool, dry, away from strong smells and out of the fridge. If a heatwave forces your hand, seal it in an airtight container first, as moisture draws sugar to the surface. Always eat it at room temperature. And those white streaks? That's bloom, and it's harmless.
Good company
Chocolate loves Margaret River wines, local coffee and cheese. Try ruby with berries, citrus and other bright flavours. Then try everything else. Purely for research.
05 — Glossary
Talk like a chocolatier.
The words you'll hear at our tasting counter, explained.
Cocoa nibs
Pieces of roasted cocoa bean with the shell removed.
Cocoa liquor
Ground nibs: a thick, hot paste that hardens as it cools, and the base of dark and milk chocolate. Despite the name, it contains no alcohol.
Cocoa butter
The bean's natural fat, extracted by pressing or by the "broma" process, where ground beans hang in a warm room and the butter drips out.
Winnowing
Separating the shells from the nibs.
Conching
Slow mixing that refines both the flavour and the texture of chocolate.
Tempering
Controlled heating and cooling that gives chocolate its shine and snap.
Couverture
High-quality chocolate made for professional use and rich in cocoa butter (at least 34%). It's what we use. Compound chocolate, by contrast, swaps in other oils and usually ends up in biscuits.
Main crop
The larger of the two cocoa harvests each year.
White, milk and dark
White is cocoa butter, sugar, milk and vanilla, with no cocoa solids. Milk typically has around 30% cocoa solids plus milk powder or condensed milk. Dark has no added milk and a higher cacao content; European rules require at least 35% cocoa solids.
06 — History
Food of the gods.
Chocolate's story stretches back more than 3,000 years. Even the tree it comes from, Theobroma, translates as "food of the gods".
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3,000+ years ago
The Olmecs
Cacao is first cultivated in the tropical forests around the Gulf of Mexico.
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The Aztecs
Worth more than gold
Cacao beans are used as currency, and chocolate is drunk cold and frothy.
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1500s
Sweetened in Spain
Spanish conquistadors bring cacao to Europe. With sugar added, it becomes a favourite of the Spanish court.
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Mid-1600s
Chocolate houses
England opens its first chocolate drinking houses.
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1800s
Something to bite
Coenraad van Houten's press separates cocoa butter from cocoa cake. By the mid-1800s Fry's, Nestlé and Cadbury are turning chocolate into the solid we know.
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1875
Milk chocolate
Swiss maker Daniel Peters creates milk chocolate.
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1999
A tin shed in Metricup
We open the doors over a long weekend. 7,500 visitors in three days, and the chocolate sells out.
Visit Us
Now put it to the test.
Free entry, free tastings, seven days at our Margaret River and Swan Valley factories.