Chocolate Tastings
Book yours today! Because real chocolate melts fast.
🎉 🎄🍫 For Chocolate Tasting Tier descriptions and pricing, scroll down to “BOOKINGS.” 🎉 🥳 🍫
The Cacao Muse Guided Chocolate Tastings take your team on a multi-sensory expedition into a world most people only know through a few commercial brands. Here in the U.S., in particular on the West Coast, we have some of the world’s best bean-to-bar artisan chocolate makers, who work directly with cacao growers all over the world.
You’ll learn how to revitalize your taste buds, open up your palate, and identify different flavor profiles. We’ll cover the health benefits of chocolate and cacao, address the recent concerns about lead and cadmium, and crack open a few misleading claims. And depending on how deep your team wants to go, we can also dive into cacao’s mesmerizing history and mythology, as well as its complicated and nuanced role in the global economy and the environment.
If you’ve grown up mostly on Lindt, Nestlé, or Ghirardelli, prepare yourself for a life-changing experience.
BOOKINGS
Book your chocolate tasting today! We’re booking in-person chocolate tastings exclusively in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the North Bay.
How to book a Cacao Muse Tasting Tier: Click on any one of the orange buttons below to fill out a brief intake form. We’ll contact you within 24-48 hours to discuss details and logistics.
TASTING TIERS
Tier 1: Hello Cacao!
Guided chocolate tasting and short presentation about cacao and chocolate. We taste a selection of 3 artisan chocolate bars, selected according to your preference:
Option 1: Dark, milk, and inclusion or blend
Option 2: All dark, different origins
Option 3: All inclusion or blend1
Duration: One hour, with 30-45 mins prep and up to 30 mins cleanup.
Includes:
Artisan chocolate samples, with option to purchase whole bars
Palate cleansers (typically apple slices, crackers, or sparkling water)
Individual tasting sheets
Fee: $50 per person, with a minimum booking of $250.
Tier 2: The Chocolate Board
Guided chocolate tasting and a presentation about cacao and chocolate. We taste a selection of 7 artisan chocolate bars: dark, milk, white, and inclusion or blend, and a selection of other cacao products.
Duration: 1.5 hours, with 45 mins prep and up to 30 mins cleanup.
Includes:
Artisan chocolate samples from 7 bars, with option to purchase whole bars
Select cacao products (cacao butter, nibs, dried cacao pulp, and/or cacao tea)
Palate cleansers (typically apple slices, crackers, or sparkling water)
Individual tasting sheets
Flavor profile wheel (per participant)
Signed copy of The Jaguar and the Cacao Tree for each participant
Fee: $90 per person, with a minimum booking of $450.
Tier 3: Country of Origin
This is a specialized tasting experience, where we dive deeper into a single region or country so you can explore the flavors and terroir of its cacao. Even within countries, different cacao-growing regions can produce varying flavor profiles, depending on the soil, water, and the fermentation and roasting processes.
For an optimal experience, we recommend booking this tier after you’ve done either Tier 1 or Tier 2, or if you’ve participated in professional tastings before and have a good grasp of chocolate flavor profiles.
Duration: 1 hour, with 45 mins prep and up to 30 mins cleanup.
Includes:
Artisan chocolate samples from 5 bars, with option to purchase whole bars
Palate cleansers (typically apple slices, crackers, or sparkling water)
Individual tasting sheets
Flavor profile wheel (per participant)
Signed copy of The Jaguar and the Cacao Tree for each participant
Fee: $80 per person, with a minimum booking of $400.
Note: If you have a preference for a specific cacao-producing country, please let us know at least 4 weeks in advance of your desired date for the chocolate tasting. Availability will vary depending on the region.
Remote Tastings
Are your work colleagues or team members dispersed across the US? Want to get together with friends or family for a special treat but can’t justify the airfare and accommodations? Fear not! With the help of virtual conferencing technology and postal delivery, we can arrange for a chocolate tasting experience that’s just as enjoyable and memorable as in-person tastings.
Your group will receive a guided chocolate tasting, accompanied by a brief talk about cacao and chocolate. We’ll taste a selection of 5 artisan chocolate bars, and you can also add other cacao products (see below).
Best of all, you and your group don’t have to go anywhere. We will ship our Cacao Muse tasting kits directly to each member of your party. And yes, plus ones are welcome, as long as they’re in the same physical place as the registered participant (we ship one package per registration).
Duration: 1 hour
Includes (per participant):
Artisan chocolate samples from 5 bars, with option to purchase whole bars
Tasting sheet
Flavor profile wheel
Recommendations for palate cleansers
Optional: You can request the cacao presentation to focus on one of the following topics (no additional fee):
Health, nutrition, & well-being
The business of chocolate
Environment & social issues
Cacao mythology and history
Optional: Select cacao products (cacao butter, nibs, dried cacao pulp, and/or cacao tea, as available. $15 extra)
Optional: Signed copy of The Jaguar and the Cacao Tree ($20 extra)
Fee: $75 per person, with a minimum booking of $375.
Shipping: Fee includes shipping within the contiguous United States. Shipping to Alaska, Hawai’i, and international addresses shall be calculated as an additional pro-rated charge.
Note: Maximum of 15 people per booking. Please book 4 weeks in advance and allow a minimum of 2 weeks for shipping.
ALLERGIES
We take allergies and related concerns seriously. When you contact us for booking a tasting, please let us know if any members of your party have allergies or dietary preferences, and we’ll customize the selection of samples accordingly.
SPECIAL RATES
We understand some organizations, such as non profits, charities, and early stage startups, might not have the budget to allow for a professional chocolate tasting. Because we believe in the power of craft chocolate to change the world one flavor profile at a time, we do offer discounts to select organizations. Contact us for more information.
BOOKING TERMS
50% of the fee is due upon booking; the remaining 50% is due the day of the event.
HAPPY TASTERS
I’ve done tastings for a large fintech firm in Silicon Valley, Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley, tech startups, numerous children’s workshops, schools, book clubs, libraries, and various private events. The largest tasting I ever guided was for 200 middle schoolers and teaching staff. To this day it remains the only chocolate tasting that required a megaphone.
For more about my experience in the world of chocolate, read this page. And if you’re wondering what it feels like to experience one of my tastings, one photo says it all:
Okay maybe two photos.
An “inclusion bar” is a chocolate bar with non chocolate ingredients added for extra flavor, color, and texture, such as fruits, nuts, spices, and other items. A “blended bar” takes the concept of an inclusion to the next level: instead of simply sprinkling dried cherries on top of a bar, for example, the chocolate maker will blend and infuse the cherry into the chocolate. The flavor of the included ingredient is more subtle, but the experience is unforgettable. Imagine a truffle that tastes like the Indian rice dish Biryani. Yes, it exists, I’ve tasted it, and I will never forget it.