Upon the Subject of Chocolate Percentages

Somewhere along the way, the percentage printed on a chocolate bar became a scoreboard, and people began pursuing higher numbers the way one pursues a personal record at a gymnasium. Ninety percent. Ninety-five. I have met men who eat chocolate they clearly dislike so they may report the number afterward.

The percentage tells you how much of the bar came from the cacao bean, in total. It does not tell you whether those beans were any good. A ninety percent bar made from mediocre beans, badly fermented and roughly roasted, is a bitter and joyless object, and no amount of arithmetic will rescue it.

A seventy percent bar from good beans, properly handled, will give you fruit and smoke and a finish that keeps going after you have stopped chewing. That is the bar to want.

Chase origins. Chase makers. Chase the small operations that name the farm on the wrapper. Leave the number to the people who are eating to prove something, and let them prove it quietly, elsewhere.