Small Rooms, Northern Winters, World-Class Chocolate

A panel of international judges sits in a room somewhere in Europe. The chocolate in front of them has no label, no brand name, no price tag. They taste, score, and move on. When the results are announced, a bar from Quebec beats entries from Ecuador, Belgium, and Switzerland.

This is not a fluke. It keeps happening.

The International Chocolate Awards operates on a simple premise: blind tasting, strict protocols, and separation by style. Judges are sensory experts and chocolatiers who evaluate chocolate without knowing who made it or where it came from. A high score means the bar is exceptional on its own terms. And Canadian makers, working in small rooms far from any cacao tree, keep earning those scores.

The Geography of Obsession

Fourteen Canadian bars currently rank among the highest-scoring chocolates in the world, according to ICA results from 2022 to 2026. Chaleur B Chocolat, a Quebec bean-to-bar maker, won ICA Gold 2025 for their Tanzania 79% dark chocolate, scoring 89.3 points. The cacao comes from Kokoa Kamili in Tanzania. McGuire Chocolate sources heirloom Arauquita cacao from Colombia's Orinoco region. Allo Simonne, based in Montreal, took ICA Gold 2024 for a chocolate spread made with rare Jaguar cacao, scoring 91.4 points.

Scores above 90 indicate extraordinary quality. Gold recognition goes to fewer than a dozen bars worldwide each year.

What these makers share is not geography but method. Bean-to-bar means controlling the entire process: importing raw cacao, managing fermentation, roasting, tempering, and packaging in-house. The result is chocolate that tastes like the place the beans grew, not like a factory formula.

For anyone in Sofia who has watched the specialty coffee scene develop over the past decade, this logic is familiar. The same obsession with origin, roasting, and terroir that defines a good espresso defines a good chocolate bar. Flow Cacao, a family-owned cacao roastery in Sofia, works with single-origin Latin American beans using the same philosophy. The Canadian model shows that any city can become a chocolate hub if makers commit to the craft.

Why These Bars Win

The flavour profiles are not what you expect from "Canadian chocolate." Chaleur B Chocolat's Peru Ucayali 72% delivers intense fruit and fragrance from Peruvian Amazon beans. McGuire Chocolate's Pumpkin Spice Milk tastes like a pumpkin spice muffin in bar form: cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, allspice, real pumpkin. Their Hanky Panky 57% combines creamy Madagascar dark milk with slow-building pili pili chili heat.

Allo Simonne experiments with Jaguar cacao, a rare variety from Theobroma bicolor, producing bars and spreads with roasted almond, caramel, and floral notes. Their Dark Chocolate Spread with Buckwheat adds lightly roasted buckwheat seeds for texture.

Canadian makers are not copying European templates. They are sourcing rare origins and building unexpected flavour combinations. The ICA judges, tasting blind, keep confirming that the results are exceptional.

Фото: Виктор Младенов

The Slow-Made Ethos Applied to Chocolate

The bars ranked here are rarely distributed beyond their home market. They are small-batch, internationally recognised, and made by people who chose process over scale.

This is the slow-made ethos applied to chocolate: small rooms, northern winters, imported beans, obsessive roasting. The same logic that makes a specialty coffee roaster in Sofia or a bean-to-bar maker in Plovdiv worth seeking out.

If you can find world-class chocolate made in Montreal, what else are we missing in our own cities? The answer, increasingly, is: less than we think. The craft is portable. The obsession is what matters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does bean-to-bar mean in chocolate making?

A: Bean-to-bar means the maker controls the entire process from raw cacao to finished bar, including importing beans, fermentation, roasting, tempering, and packaging. This differs from chocolatiers who buy pre-made chocolate and shape it.

Q: How does the International Chocolate Awards judge chocolate?

A: The ICA uses blind tasting with strict protocols. Judges are sensory experts and chocolatiers who evaluate chocolate without seeing brand names or prices. Bars are separated by style and scored against international entries.

Q: What score indicates exceptional quality at the ICA?

A: Scores above 90 indicate extraordinary quality. Gold recognition is awarded to fewer than a dozen bars worldwide each year. The highest-scoring Canadian bars include Allo Simonne's Jaguar Chocolate Spread at 91.4 points and Chaleur B Chocolat's Milk 51% at 90.6 points.