A chocolate lover’s dream job

Some jobs just sound too good to be true, like being a professional chocolate taster. However, that is very much a real job, and it sounds amazing. Tasting Table recently sat down with Cherrie Lo, a certified chocolate taster, author, and judge of chocolate competitions, to learn what a day in the life of a professional chocolate taster is like.

Lo says that she starts preparing for a tasting session the night before. She can’t eat anything that is too strongly-flavored because it may influence the way the chocolate tastes even the next day. Strong scents are also a no-no, so Lo doesn’t wear perfume or use any scented lotion. Between each tasting, she cleanses her palate with sparkling water, a bite of baguette, or a spoonful of polenta, which she says helps neutralize the palate.

The tasting itself involves a lot of criteria including the initial impression of flavor, how the chocolate melts as you eat it, and what flavors linger afterward. Lo takes scrupulous notes, saying that it is a challenge to write down all of the flavors, which can be fleeting. In addition to the actual tasting, Lo uses her other senses to evaluate the chocolate: visually inspecting it, listening and feeling for the “snap” when the chocolate is broken, and smelling it up close to document the initial aromas.