A testing time for chocoholics

Poor harvests and sweet-toothed investors prompt The National staffers to taste-test on five top brands - while they can still afford to.

Ivory Coast's cocoa harvest has been poor in recent years.

What in the name of Willy Wonka is going on? Liking a chunk of chocolate once in a while is one thing, but buying almost the whole of Europe's supply of cocoa beans in one swoop, as one London hedge fund did last week? Well, that's just selfish. Prices of the precious bean have since shot up to their highest levels since 1977. Meanwhile Armajaro, the fund in question, has had to take delivery of 240,100 tonnes of beans - about seven per cent of annual global production. Financial markets are rife with rumour about what they plan to do with it all. We, though, are more concerned about the implications for chocoholics. The prices of chocolate have been steadily on the rise for the past couple of years following poor harvests in Ivory Coast and Ghana, where around 40 per cent of the crop is grown. But so far, the difference has been negligible. Now this little attempt to corner the market, analysts suspect, could cause them to skyrocket. Worse, there is speculation that producers, in order to avoid sharp price increases, will simply - gasp - reduce the size of the bars.

With a potential chocolate crisis looming, it was time to dig deep, put on our white coats and conduct a taste test. After all, when times are tough, and a chocolate fix costs the same as dinner for two, you can't afford to make a mistake. Our spread was to include some of the world's most popular chocolate brands. All were to be subjected to the same rigorous tasting methods - snap, suck and swallow - by a tasting panel of five members of The National staff, before being marked out of 10. The tests would all be conducted blind.

Chocolate inspires fierce loyalties, the kind that precludes any Cadbury's devotee from ever buying Galaxy or Lindt. Was it, though, like the famous Coke-Pepsi test, in which despite Pepsi's winning most of the blind taste tests against its rival, it is outsold by Coca-Cola in the supermarkets? Impervious to the powers of advertising we are clearly not (according to some, it's to do with the shape of the bottle and all those nostalgic advertisements). Without any packaging to confuse us, would our choc-o-meters swing in a new direction?

But first a bit about our tasting panel: James Doran, the deputy business editor, is British but grew up in France and spent 10 years in the US. While a student during the early 1990s, he worked at the Bournville factory, where Cadbury's chocolate has been made since 1879. His favourite chocolate is Lindt's Excellence 70 per cent cocoa content. Hala Khalaf is a health reporter from Canada. Her father owned the Galler Belgian chocolate franchise in Jordan, so she once went on a training course at Galler HQ in Belgium, where she learnt about chocolate-making. Her favourite kind is Galler's Les Florales.

Leah Reiter is a sports page editor from California, although she lived in France for seven years. Her favourite type of chocolate is Lindt's 70 per cent cocoa content. Ed Lake, a features writer for Review, is from the UK. He has no chocolate experience to speak of (consider him our man-on-the-street taster) but his favourite kind is Montezuma's chilli chocolate. I am a features writer for Arts & Life, and part-British, part-Swiss. I also have no hands-on chocolate experience bar my blood link to some of the world's chocolate-making heartlands. My favourite chocolate, though, is Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

Now a run-through of the brands we would put to the test: from Switzerland, there were Lindt and Aero. From Belgium, Galler. And from the UK, Cadbury and Galaxy (though owned by US-based Mars, Galaxy or "Dove", as it is known there, uses different chocolate in the US from that in its Middle Eastern and UK markets). Tasting samples were the purest, most basic kinds of milk chocolate we could find from each.

Off we went, with a chocolate tasting pack each and a glass of water to refresh the palate. Half an hour later, the results were in. Receiving rave reviews almost all round was Galaxy. "Silky, tasty," said James. Ed described it as having "the texture of fudge". Leah, curiously, spotted a hint of mint, while Hala claimed it to be "what good chocolate should taste like". With a robust 35 out of 50, Galaxy bounded to the top of the chart.

Also a hit was Cadbury's Dairy Milk. "Good old-fashioned British chocolate," said James. "Feels very solid and isn't too sweet or milky," mulled Ed. Only Leah was unimpressed. "Slightly sour flavour," she noted. Still, with 34 points, second place went to Cadbury's. Galler, despite some not very favourable-sounding reviews, managed to claw its way into third position with 29 points. "Not very notable," said Ed, other than for its "remarkably non-brittle" texture. "French through and through," stated James boldly but not quite correctly, before adding: "Pretty horrible."

Leah and Hala bolstered its score, though, Leah liking its "smooth, strong cocoa taste" and Hala praising its "very light" texture. Equal fourth place, with 28, went to the brace of Swiss brands - Lindt and Aero. "Swiss or German," said James of his professed favourite brand, Lindt. "A bit budget but very good." Ed was a fan of its texture, which he described as "satiny", while Hala found it all a but much. "It is sweet and rich, but maybe a little too much so."

We're not sure how happy Lindt would have been to have found itself scored the same as its considerably poorer cousin, Aero, but so it was. "Very delicious," proclaimed Hala. "Almost my favourite!" Leah, though, was unimpressed by its trademark bubbles. "Pumped with air. Not a good mouth feel," she stated. Ed had some rather more biological musings on the topic. "Not especially nice chocolate, but since a good percentage is air, you can't really complain. Air is good for you - everyone knows that."

Interestingly, both James and Leah scored Galaxy above their favourite Lindt. And Hala was surprisingly harsh on Galler, her preferred brand, describing it as "average at most". Only I remained true to my favourite, Cadbury, scoring it a near-perfect nine. Cost also seems to have little bearing on taste, with the two top-scoring brands numbering among the cheapest. Just as well, really, seeing as our next chocolate fix may require the sale of our grandmothers.

How our taset-test chocolate brands compare