What better way to celebrate this time of year than with a Valentine’s Day Chocolate Tasting? Tastings are one of the most intimate and fun ways to share a collective experience with your friends and guests. It allows everyone to share their unique perspective and opinion on the flavors of the same treat. It’s extra exciting when everyone is trying it blind! Since tuning out one sense supposedly amplifies the others that can only mean … even better-tasting chocolate!
I’ve hosted a variety of tastings including several blind chocolate tastings so I’ve written this guide on how to host your own. Now let’s get started on how to plan a Valentine’s day themed chocolate tasting for your next party or Galentine’s Day.
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Table of Contents
Planning Your Valentine’s Day Chocolate Tasting
Before you can host your event there’s some preliminary planning you need to do. It’s not too much work, in fact most of it’s shopping for chocolates and making up your own rules. Sounds good, right? Keep reading!
Choose Your Chocolates
Choosing your chocolates is arguably one of the best to-dos on your blind tasting checklist (or ever). At this point make sure you’re aware of any allergies (especially nuts) and if there are any dietary restrictions you need to accommodate for.
For a well-balanced chocolate tasting consider at least one white chocolate, one milk chocolate, and one dark chocolate. Those chocolates can have other flavors but try and include one of each so your guests will taste the whole spectrum. Some other delicious chocolates to consider could include sea salt caramel, raspberry truffles, or even coconut.
There are a lot of chocolate options out there so here are a few ideas on potential chocolate palates.
The Valentine’s Day Chocolate Hearts – Budget Friendly and Festive
You can find these kinds of chocolates at most stores including dollar stores.
Classic Chocolate Candy – Easy and Familiar
You can find these kinds of chocolates anywhere – they are sold from your grocery store to your gas station. If you can’t find them in bite-size bars you can always cut up a standard size chocolate bar.
Valentine’s Day Chocolate Heart Collection
You can find these kinds of chocolates in stores like Target, Walmart, BJs and Costco. Buying the large bag means you’ll get a lot for a small price but still get that variety of chocolates you’ll need for the tasting. Plus the heart-shaped chocolates are sweet and festive!
Mix of Valentine’s Day Chocolates!
It’s your party and your chocolate tasting so you can actually mix a variety of chocolates and candy – you don’t need to stick to just one of these, you can do one of each or any combination – just have fun!
Decide on the number of chocolates
The number of chocolates you serve at your tasting is up to you but a good number is between 3-6 chocolates. Less than three is just a tease and more than six can be a bit filling especially if you choose very decadent or sweet chocolates.
Determine Chocolate Tasting Order
Once you’ve selected your chocolates for your tasting you should determine the order in which you’ll serve them. I recommend serving them from bitter to sweet, dark to light, and subtle to intense – it will be a less jarring experience for the palette if you do.
For example: Dark Chocolate > Milk Chocolate > White Chocolate
If you had multiple Dark Chocolates you’d go from the highest cacao percentage (measurement of how bitter the chocolate will be) and work backwards from there.
Make sure to write down the order and have a list for yourself so you have a reference on how you plan to serve your chocolate – it’ll keep you organized on the day you host.
Prepare Valentine’s Day Chocolate Tasting Guess Sheets
Now that you have your chocolates and your tasting order decided on it’s time to make printable tasting guest sheets for your guests. You can also choose just to pass out blank sheets of paper but where’s the fun in that?
I’ve designed a Valentine’s Day Chocolate Tasting sheet for blind (and non-blind) chocolate tastings which includes:
- Guess Field – a blank space to guess the chocolate
- Heart Rating (similar to a star rating) – to rate tastiness
- Points Field – to score points
- Notes Section – to add any notes to help them properly guess the chocolates
- BONUS: I also designed a tasting placemat for non-blind tastings
Valentine’s Day Chocolate Tasting Sheet and Placemat
You can purchase my Valentine’s Day Chocolate tasting sheet and placemat from my Etsy shop – download and print it instantly after purchase.
Hosting Your Tasting
Setup
On the day of your tasting setup your guests at the table with their own place setting.
Things to place at each tasting setting:
- cup of water
- plain animal cracker (makes a great palette cleanser)
- plate and napkin
- the tasting guess sheet
- disposal cup (this is an empty cup to discard chocolate if they don’t want to finish)
- Sleeping mask or blindfold
Once you’ve seated your guests you will go over the rules of the blind chocolate tasting.
Typical rules for a blind chocolate tasting:
- Blindfolds must be on until the host says otherwise
- This is to make sure if anyone finishes tasting a chocolate they don’t take their blindfold off and see the chocolate being tasted by the others
- As host its best to tell everyone “blindfolds on” and “blindfolds off” on your signal
- Dispose of any unfinished chocolate in their designated disposal cup (make sure this isn’t see through or empty these between each tasting round). There’s not many guests who don’t finish their chocolate but there are a few so be prepared for it.
“Blind” Your Guests
This always brings a few laughs. Something about having a room full of ladies, chocolate, and blindfolds gets everyone giggling and making “50 Shades of Gray” and “Birdbox” jokes.
You can choose how you “blind” your guests, but an easy, cheap way is to buy a yard of fabric and cut it into 2” strips (which can double as a hair ribbon afterwards).
Another way to do so and give a reusable party favor is to provide sleeping eye masks. You can either buy them or make them. If you decide to make your own sleeping masks check out my post DIY: Sleeping Masks in under 10 Minutes.
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DIY: Sleeping Eye Masks in 15 Minutes
These sleeping masks make great gifts that anyone can use and can be customized for any occasion!
Not a maker or just don’t have time to make your own sleeping eye masks? Check out these options you can purchase from Amazon -they’re all pretty budget-friendly:
These are affiliate links – which means I will earn a percentage if you make a qualifying purchase at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Tasting the Chocolates
After all the prep and set up it’s time to start the tasting! All the hard work is done at this point so follow these simple guidelines to run each tasting round:
- Ask everyone to put “blindfolds on”
- Pass out a round of chocolate
- Tell everyone to begin tasting
- After a sufficient amount of time of your choosing, ask the room to raise their hands if they are not done tasting. If anyone raises their hand ask them to finish or dispose of any unfinished chocolate to their designated disposal cup. At this point you may choose to empty these cups or blindly trust (see what I did there? 😉 I believe that’s actually a double pun) your guests not to cheat.
- Once you’ve confirmed your guests are finished, ask them to “take blindfolds off”
- Give everyone time to write their guess, notes, and rating down.
Repeat those Valentine’s Day chocolate tasting steps until you’ve finished your rounds of chocolate. Now ask each guest to pass their tasting sheet to the right and call out the answers for each round. If you have prizes, award any winners – in a pinch you can always gift and bag up the remaining chocolate from your tasting as a prize.
If you’re looking for a cute and unique handmade gift check out these super cute chocolate bar purses! They look like a mini designer purse and they fit a standard chocolate bar. I can’t think of a more fitting Valentine’s Day prize for a blind chocolate tasting.
Chocolate Bar Purse Favor Box
Perfectly fits one chocolate bar and great gift idea~
After scoring all that’s left is mingle and allow everyone to talk about their favorites and least favorites of the chocolates. And that’s how to host an epic blind chocolate tasting for your next party!
XOXO