Chocolate Tasting

A professional chocolatier leads a 60-minute live tasting. Individually packaged kits arrive at each participant's door beforehand with the chocolates, tasting notes and any pairings, so everyone unwraps the same bars at the same moment.

There are three menus. European vs American sets rich, creamy European bars against bolder, sweeter American ones. Unusual Flavors runs chili, sea salt, lavender and exotic fruit through a curated line-up. Craft Makers Select is small-batch chocolate chosen for its bean origins and the care that went into making it. Whiskey, wine, tea or coffee pairings can be added to any of them.

Your chocolatier covers where the beans grew, how the bar was made and how to taste it properly, then keeps the group comparing notes as they go. All three menus are gluten-free and vegetarian as they stand.

Look, snap, smell, then let it melt. Whatever you do, don't chew.

1. Look at it. Well-made chocolate is glossy and evenly colored. Dull grey streaks mean the cocoa butter has bloomed and the bar was stored badly.
2. Snap it. A clean, sharp crack is the sound of good temper. A soft, bendy, waxy break means the cocoa butter crystals set the wrong way.
3. Smell it before it goes anywhere near your tongue. A surprising share of what you will call flavor is actually aroma.
4. Put a piece on your tongue and leave it alone. The first note is usually sweetness or acidity, and the interesting part - fruit, nuts, tobacco, earth - arrives in the finish. Chewing skips straight past it.

That snap is not decoration. Cocoa butter can crystallize into several different forms, and only one of them sets hard, glossy and stable; coaxing it into that form is called tempering, and it is the fiddliest job in a chocolate kitchen. It is also why chocolate melts in your mouth and almost nowhere else, because cocoa butter melts just below human body temperature. Your chocolatier covers how each bar was made before you taste it, so the snap tells you something.

And the percentage on the wrapper?

That is the share of the bar, by weight, that came from the cacao bean - cocoa solids plus cocoa butter. A 70% bar is 70% bean and roughly 30% sugar and other ingredients. It is not a quality score. A 90% bar made from harsh, poorly fermented beans is unpleasant, while a 65% bar from good beans can be extraordinary, so the number tells you how sweet a bar is rather than how good it is; origin, fermentation and roast do that. White chocolate proves the point from the other direction, since it contains cocoa butter but no cocoa solids at all, which is why purists argue about whether it counts. The Craft Makers Select menu is where this gets fun, because bars from different origins sitting at similar percentages can taste nothing alike.

Recipe rules and processing, mostly. In the US, a bar can be sold as milk chocolate with as little as 10% chocolate liquor by weight. EU rules set the floor at 25% total dry cocoa solids. More cocoa and less sugar changes both the flavor and the way the bar melts.

Then there is conching. In 1879 the Swiss maker Rodolphe Lindt built a machine that ground and aerated chocolate for hours instead of minutes, driving off harsh volatile acids and coating every particle in cocoa butter. Before that, chocolate was gritty - conching is the reason it is smooth at all. How long a maker conches, and how the milk is handled, is a large part of why two bars at the same cocoa percentage can feel completely different in the mouth.

The European vs American menu is built around exactly this comparison. Bring your opinions.

It gives everyone the same thing to react to at the same time, which is the whole trick. A tasting is one of the few work formats where a quiet engineer and a VP have equal standing, because nobody is an expert and everyone's palate is an equally valid instrument.

The session is structured rather than open-ended - compare these two, describe what you get, disagree about it - so it doesn't collapse into an awkward video call with snacks. Your chocolatier keeps the conversation moving, trivia and a mini scavenger hunt come free with every event, and there is no skill barrier: no cooking, no knives, no mess, nothing to burn. If the goal is a room talking easily by minute ten, this is one of the shortest routes there.

All three, and the rates on this page are the virtual ones. Virtual is the default: individually packaged kits ship to every participant and the group tastes together on Zoom, with Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and WebEx all supported if your company runs something else.

For in person or hybrid, tell your planner where your people actually sit and they'll build it around that. Rockoly in-person events run about two hours, at your office or a venue we arrange, and include themed appetizers and non-alcoholic refreshments. In a hybrid setup, kits go out to the remote half while the in-office group tastes in the room, so nobody is watching from the outside.

Group sizes run from 3 to 600 and up. Very large groups are usually split by department or spread across a couple of days, which keeps the tasting conversational instead of turning it into a broadcast.

Usually, yes, and that's chocolate's quiet advantage over a cooking class. A tasting isn't a meal, so it doesn't have to land at lunch or dinner. A 60-minute session at four in the afternoon in London is eight in the morning in San Francisco, and nobody feels cheated out of a dinner they were promised.

Kits ship free inside the US and travel internationally as well, with Australia, the UK, Canada, Germany, Ireland and Spain among the regular destinations, or your planner can send a shopping list if an address is genuinely hard to reach. Flag the overseas addresses early - those are the ones worth planning around.

And if no single hour works, run it twice. Very large groups already get split by department or across a couple of days, so a European sitting and an Americas sitting is the same shape - ask your planner whether both dates can be held together.

European vs American is $645 for groups under 5, then $129 per person for 5 to 30, $119 for 31 to 50, and $109 for larger groups. Unusual Flavors is $695 under 5, then $139, $129 and $119. Craft Makers Select is $745 under 5, then $149, $139 and $129.

The virtual event rate covers a personal chef, a dedicated event planner, ingredient delivery, gratuities and all service fees. US shipping is free, and kits travel internationally too - Australia, the UK, Canada, Germany, Ireland and Spain among the regular destinations - or we send a shopping list if you'd rather buy locally. Free customization and free dietary adjustments are part of the rate, not upsells.

At $109 to $149 a head for groups of five or more, chocolate is the premium tasting that scales to a whole department rather than just the leadership team - a curated flight, an expert running it, and a kit at every door.

Yes, and both are free. All three menus are gluten-free and vegetarian as they stand, which already covers most rooms. Vegan, kosher and no-alcohol adjustments are handled at no extra cost when you tell us in advance - worth knowing that most milk and white chocolate isn't vegan, so a vegan taster gets a dark line-up built for them. On the selection itself, you can mix dark, milk and white, lean into single-origin bars or infused truffles, or ask for a specific pairing, and your planner will build the flight around what your team actually likes. Headcount can move after you book; just tell your planner as soon as you know.

Give us about three weeks so every kit lands before the session, and ask anyway if you are up against a tighter date, because rush events are sometimes possible depending on chef availability. One seasonal note worth having in mind: chocolate does not enjoy a hot courier van, so summer bookings in warm regions get packed and routed differently, and that is a conversation better had three weeks out than three days out.

Fill in the inquiry form on this page, write to events@rockoly.com, or call (617) 939-9732, and a planner comes back with open dates, a menu recommendation for your group and a full quote. A $250 deposit holds the date, payable by credit card, ACH bank transfer or check, whichever your finance team prefers.

Cancel 21 or more days out and you are refunded what you paid less any nonrecoverable costs already committed; 8 to 20 days out you choose between a 50% refund and a 100% Rockoly credit; inside 8 days payments are nonrefundable, though one complimentary reschedule is yours if you ask 14+ days ahead. Every event carries the Love Your Event Guarantee: your team should have an amazing experience, and if your Rockoly event doesn't live up to expectations, we'll make it right.