Since a formative experience with Hershey’s, I’ve avoided US-made chocolate. I had been so looking forward to Hershey’s, too, having heard much about it and seen it in influential (to me) American films. But a bit like finding out your parents aren’t right about everything, when I tasted it the emotions I felt weren’t joy, but shock, a little indignation, followed by, ‘Is it me?’ Apparently not.
So it was some years before I ventured to try American chocolate again and, even then, I tried to duck out of it and refused to taste it in front of others, lest I had to spit-eject. The first was Tcho (pronounced ‘cho’ as in the beginning of chocolate), a made-in-California 54% cocoa Dark Milk bar. The notes said fudgey and indeed it was; also surprisingly good and slightly chewy, which I liked. It’s not the easiest chocolate to get here (Cocoa Runners is the only stockist I’ve found, £5.95), but if you go to the States the bars are around the $4 mark so you can really experiment. Other flavours I tried were Pretzel Crunch at 54% and the 62% Mint Choc Chip, both super tasty.
Then there is Dick Taylor, so named after the two boat builders/wood workers who have, for the past 10 years, also made craft chocolate, in California. The bars look like something you’d pick up from the Olesen’s Mercantile in Little House on the Prairie. I had the Madagascar 72% Black Fig (£9.95, Cocoa Runners). The rugged wrapping belies an ecclesiastical-looking moulded bar containing just three ingredients: Madagascan cocoa, sugar and black mission figs. Dark, rich and converting.
