ChocoFiles Awards

Many people like awards, so here are the ChocoFiles' Awards.

Note Carefully: As I often try to stress and make very clear, these awards are for my Favorites not the "Best". I believe that trying to proclaim the "Best" of an aesthetic experience is impossible. It is the same thing as asking "what is the best song?" or "what is the best painting?". As I explain in my Review Philosophy my ratings are "based solely on what I enjoy, according to my experience and my personal preferences. Tasting chocolate is an aesthetic experience, so a great deal of subjective preferences and experiences will always be involved. I am NOT directly rating the quality of a given chocolate. Hopefully there will be a general correlation between quality and my preferences, but I believe that it’s an impossible quest to look for a chocolate that can be objectively quantified as “The Best”. Instead, my much more modest and achievable aim is merely to find “My Favorites”. So the ChocoFiles Bar of Excellence Awards are the bars that I enjoyed the most in a given year.

I separate bars into what I call "Classes" for comparison of bars that are similar.

All awards have inherent limitations, so please be aware of the limitations of these awards:

1) They are based on one person's preferences and experience.

2) Since tasting chocolate is an aesthetic experience people's tastes vary. Other people may not like what I like, and that is fine.

3) The awards are only from the chocolate that was reviewed this year. The number was limited by the constraints of my time, budget, and goals. Since my goal is to experience extraordinary chocolate, I am not interested in just indiscriminately tasting as many new bars as possible.

4) Many European, Asian, and Australian craft chocolates are very under-represented because they are difficult for me to purchase in the U.S.