So my brother, who lives in Switzerland, today sent lnhammer and I three Lindt chocolate bars, labeled as follows:
70% Cacao: Noir Intense
85% Cacao: Noir Puissant
99% Cacao: Noir Absolu
And told us to let him know the result of the taste test. 🙂
So, keeping in mind that I’m actually one of the few people I know who isn’t a chocolate addict:
The 70% cocoa: Tasted like a good, solid, smooth dark chocolate.
The 85% cocoa: Tasted like an unusually intense solid, smooth dark chocolate.
The 99% cocoa: Tasted like cocoa powder in chocolate bar form. Only way, way stronger. I needed to taste it once (and, indeed, when I heard there was such a thing I asked my brother to send it), but I probably don’t need to taste it again. 🙂
It’s also worth noting that the 99% cocoa bar also came with warnings, in French and German, telling us just how strong it was. I’ve never consumed chocolate that came with a warning label before.
For comparison’s sake, the minimum cocoa content required by the FDA to call something chocolate is 10%. But that would be a low-end milk chocolate–dark chocolate seems to be upwards of 50% cocoa.