Most dark chocolate includes vanilla; not ours. Chocolate makers often include vanilla as a method to smooth or reduce bitterness arising from low quality bulk beans.
Starting nearly a century ago, chocolate companies found that the low quality beans they were using were often bitter for consumers, even after adding a lot of sugar, so they added vanilla. Over time, even as dark chocolate became more prevalent, they continued to use vanilla to offset some of the commodity beans’ bitterness and to have a more consistent flavor customers were familiar with. Also, keep an eye out for Vanillin, a cheaper synthetic flavor that is used sometimes to avoid the cost of natural vanilla.
Many high quality chocolates contain natural vanilla. There are many reasons for this such as smoothing the flavor for consumer consistency, plus some people like the flavor of vanilla with chocolate. That’s Ok. Chocolate expert and writer, Antonella Tromba, has written an article about vanilla in chocolate worth reading for more detail. We are fans of her thinking.
At Parré Chocolat, by sourcing only high quality beans, we have much less bitterness and a much more genuine cocoa flavor profile. In fact, we delight in the different flavors that beans can have, just like coffee or even wine. More to come about flavor profiles :)
So our chocolate is only high quality beans and a little sugar, so you can enjoy tasting Pure Dark Chocolate.
