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at Wed, 11 Jan 2006 20:56:32 GMT in >,
lid (ferret) wrote :

>Alex Rast wrote:
>
>> In a larger sense, indeed, the whole chocolate industry is moving
>> upscale. Commodity brands like Hershey's and Lindt are producing
>> excellent chocolate and boutique brands are exploring new sources and
>> showing off single varietals.
>
>Lindt at least has had some pretty good dark chocolate for some time,
>unlike Hershey's.

Well, for a while Lindt was merely average for the most part. I do agree
that Excellence 70% (which has been out now for several years) was pretty
good, although not exactly the best of the 70%'s, but it was with the
introduction of the Excellence 85% that they really started to get serious.
Hershey's 60% is better than Excellence 70% by some margin but not the
equal of the awe-inspiring 85%. Lindt also has brought out some new
varietal chocolates which look very interesting. It's that new angle to
Lindt that shows they're moving in a different direction.

>>I guess I'm a little spoiled because there are enough stores around here
>that carry really good chocolate that I don't have to settle for any of
>the waxy generic crap that Hershey's, Nestles, and Girardelli sell for
>the most part.

Ghirardelli has been excellent for many, many years - one of the better
chocolate manufacturers all round. Their bittersweet has consistently been
better than Hershey's, or Lindt - on a par with companies like Callebaut.
It's worth mentioning too that Nestle produces a superb bittersweet - Noir
Intense 74%, although it's hard to find.

I'll also say, however, that your description "waxy" suggests a texture
focus, so your idea of a good chocolate may depend a lot more on the
texture qualities than mine does. Not that Ghirardelli has ever had poor
texture, though - but it may be a factor. Ghirardelli is an interesting
company that many people seem inclined to be prejudicial against simply
because they're large and American. However, neither size nor nationality
has IME an absolute correlation with quality. In the limit, a large company
might not be able to produce as good a chocolate as a smaller company,
simply because the smaller company can use rarer ultra-quality beans that
the large company wouldn't be able to use simply because not enough is
produced to meet the supply they would need. However, beyond that limit,
it's very much all over the map.

Now, of course, Lindt owns Ghirardelli anyway, so wherever their quality
has been in the past we can probably expect (with Lindt's current focus),
if anything, still more improvement.

--
Alex Rast

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