Chocolate Tasters: The 'Dream Job' That Demands Technical Skill and a Keen Palate

Working with chocolate every day might sound like a dream job, but for professionals like Nathalia Costa, quality manager at a chocolate factory in Caçapava, São Paulo, it requires more than just enjoyment of sweets. The role demands a refined palate, a sharp sense of smell, and keen visual perception, involving rigorous aptitude tests and specific training. Tasters evaluate products from packaging integrity to visual appearance before the actual tasting, which is the final step. This meticulous process ensures the quality of the chocolate, with tasters learning to identify nuanced characteristics of aroma and flavor, including those of cocoa, milk, and bitterness. Quality control begins even before production, with raw materials like cocoa, sugar, and milk undergoing tasting evaluations upon arrival at the factory. In artisanal chocolate production, such as at Liege Chocolates in Campos do Jordão, owners like Cezar Bithencurt also taste every product. Bithencurt, who traveled to Switzerland to study chocolate making, can now assess a chocolate's color and texture simply by looking at it. New products undergo blind taste tests with staff and external individuals to gather feedback for improvements before market release. Aspects like aroma, shine, and the characteristic 'snap' of a chocolate bar are also assessed. Despite tasting chocolate daily, professionals like Costa and Bithencurt report not getting tired of it, attributing this to specific tasting schedules and controlled portion sizes, emphasizing that they 'taste' rather than consume large quantities.