TCHO chocolate is just outta beta!

Our chocolatier friends at TCHO have released their 1.0 "gold master" bars. I've been nibbling on their betas for months, and can hardly wait to taste these.

For the past year, we asked for your feedback during our Beta program to help us create our first flavor-driven chocolates. And an astonishing 46 percent of you gave it. Now, a year and 1026 (literally) iterations later – your “Chocolatey”, “Fruity”, “Nutty”, and “Citrus” have arrived. They have been worth the wait - they are, indeed, obsessively good.

Introducing TCHO’s first “gold master” formulations in our stunning new packaging.

We did it together, and we couldn't have done it without you. Thank You! And now that we have arrived at 1.0 formulations, Susanna Dulkinys, partner in one of the world’s leading design firms, Spiekermann Partners, has designed new 1.0 packaging that's as delightful and innovative as our chocolate. Susanna's new packaging delights - it's bright, colorful, tactile, sophisticated.

TCHO's 1.0 "gold masters."

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  MissyB, I saw that when it came out, and it’s a great article.

• [OM]

  ..The real question is whether or not it breaks out my face like most American-made chocolates do thanks to the brown dyes they use.

• [freetardzero]

  Yeah, why only for sale to continental US? Low melting point? Kinda doesn’t make much sense in the 21st Century! *le sigh* Oh well, I guess I’ll just go back to listening to Pandora…oh, wait. Nevermind.

• [missyb]

  Yeah, except Noka’s a joke(a). Noka’s decent chocolate, but it’s also a scam.

  http://www.dallasfood.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=78

• [brucethehoon]

  Ya, ya, whatever. TCHO is good choccies, but look at their TREAT line. They have dark chocolate covered honey roasted cashew pieces that I literally dream about. http://www.tcho.com/store/treats. Is it worth $20 for a (quite large) tin? YES. I just ordered my second :)

• [palindrome]

  I’m as much a wannabe chocolate snob as the next prole, but by wallet can’t bear US$6 for a bar of the chocolate. Oh sure, I’ve bought a US$4 dollar bar at Costplus, but that’s pretty much my limit. Sorry guys! Good luck with that fancy moral chocolate bar!

• [Ugly Canuck]

  Can’t buy these but they look to be choco-tastic.

• [nerdler]

  $30 for ~8.5 ounces of chocolate? Yikes.

• [PurpleWyrm]

  The real question is is it manufactured by cannibalistic great-old-one-worshiping dwarfs?

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcho-Tcho

  (Dagnabit, someone already made that reference in one of the earlier posts. Well I’m going to post this anyway :)

• [Daemon]

  #2 That’s nothing compared to another chocolate company that’s shown up on Boing Boing, Noka. By a factor of at least 10…

  http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/27/chocolateobsessed-bl.html

• [Foolster41]

  The name makes me think of THNO chocolate.

• [Anonymous]

  Is Tcho really making chocolate from bean to bar in the United States? Someone ought to look into that.

• [5000!]

  there are plenty of boutique chocolate makers all over the world producing expensive connoisseur’s chocolate.

  True, but there aren’t any producing it in America while at the same time working to be an agent of positive social change. Check out their statement about sourcing:

  http://www.tcho.com/chocolate/tchosource

  and slavery:

  http://www.tcho.com/chocolate/no-slavery

  They also have some alternate take on how to categorize chocolate flavors, but I’m not enough of a connoisseur to pay it much attention. I was, however, lucky enough to get some of the beta samples via Joi and it’s damn good.

• [Bledsoefilms]

  @OM

  no brown dies in this chocolate, I can personally vouch for it

• [alexeck]

  Man I would buy this. But $24 for 8.5 ounces of chocolate seems high. If they can bring their prices down just a bit more, I think they would have a lot of people buying it (I would!). Godiva sells a slightly larger amount of chocolate for $17.

• [blueworld]

  #1: Just look at the ingredients. Any good dark chocolate, no matter where it’s made, should have a maximum of five ingredients: cocoa solids, cocoa butter, sugar, soy lecithin, and vanilla.

  I don’t see what the big deal is about this new chocolate company. Pure and single origin chocolate has been gaining popularity for a few years and there are plenty of boutique chocolate makers all over the world producing expensive connoisseur’s chocolate.

• [Otter]

  The best I’ve ever tasted was about twice as much, and worth it. No, it wasn’t Noka:
  Domori Criollo Porcelana, $4.95/25g, $0.198/g at Chocosphere*
  Tcho Chocolatey, $12/120g, $0.10/g

  *http://chocosphere.com/Html/Products/domori.html#dm_chateau

• [techdeviant]

  @10 5000!

  I don’t know, Theo chocolate is also some damn good fair trade, sourced chocolate and its made right here in Seattle.

  theochocolate.com

• [sammich]

  I did beta-testing for Milky Way as a child in the 60′s – best job I ever had =D

• [Takuan]

  we only had beta particle testing (stupid flat tasting strontium anyway!)

• [Raikus]

  The real question is why is Oliver Stone offering me a chocolate bar?

• [soupisgoodfood]

  I’ve generally thought, that when it comes to things like food, the makers should make what they think is best, not go by feedback. By dictating to feedback, they are simply producing the chocolate the appears to the most wide range of people. It’s like the Britney Spears of chocolate. It’s also like saying that they don’t know what they’re doing, and why would I want to pay so much for chocolate from people who don’t know what they’re doing?

  Perhaps they do know what they’re doing and I’ve just seen to many open source energy drinks et al.