Every dark chocolate wrapper leads with a number, whether it’s 70%, 85%, or 100%. The number looks like a score, and a lot of people shop by it like one, but it’s really a simple piece of math. Once you know what the percentage measures, you can predict how a bar will taste before you open the wrapper. Here’s how to read cacao percentages so you can pick a dark chocolate bar that matches how bitter or sweet you like your chocolate.
What Does 70% Cacao Mean?
The cacao percentage is the share of the bar, by weight, that comes from the cacao bean. That share includes the ground bean itself, called chocolate liquor, and any added cocoa butter, since both come straight from cacao. A 70% cacao bar is 70% cacao by weight, and in a plain dark bar, nearly all of the remaining 30% is sugar, so the number tells you both how much bean you’re getting and how much sugar comes with it. At 95% cacao, almost none of the bar is sugar.
What Is Dark Chocolate? What Counts as Dark by Law
Dark chocolate is chocolate made from cacao and sugar without milk, but the term carries less legal weight than most people assume. In the United States, there’s no official standard for the term “dark chocolate.” The FDA defines sweet and semisweet chocolate, and bittersweet chocolate must contain at least 35% chocolate liquor, but “dark” is a style term that any manufacturer can use. That’s why a 45% cacao bar and a 100% cacao bar can both be sold as dark chocolate. Milk chocolate is the category with a clear boundary, because it has to contain milk. So if a bar has no dairy and a substantial amount of cacao, it’s dark chocolate in every way that matters, and the percentage is a more reliable signal than the word “dark.”
What 70% Dark Chocolate Tastes Like
70% cacao is the balancing point, with enough sugar to round out the bitterness and enough cacao to keep the flavor interesting. At Taza, our 70% Deliciously Dark bar is made from three organic ingredients and stone ground, so the bright, fruity notes of the bean come through. Because we grind on granite millstones instead of conching for days, our 70% cacao bar tastes bolder than the same percentage on a mass-market wrapper. The percentage tells you how much sugar is in the bar, but the process decides how much of the cacao’s flavor survives.
Dark Chocolate Percentages From 80% to 100% Cacao
Each step up the scale trades sugar for intensity. At 80% cacao and at 85% Super Dark, fruit and a pleasant bitterness take the lead. At 87% cacao and 95% Wicked Dark, the sweetness is barely there and the cacao flavor dominates. At 100%, there’s no sugar at all, just stoneground cacao that tastes closer to espresso than to candy. Each of these levels uses the same organic cacao in a different ratio with sugar.
Dark Chocolate Percentage Chart
The chart below shows how the most common cacao percentages compare, along with the Taza chocolate to try at each level.
Why Two 70% Cacao Bars Can Taste Different
The percentage can’t tell you where the cacao came from, how it was fermented and roasted, or how heavily it was processed afterward. A 70% bar made from bulk commodity beans that are roasted dark and conched for days mostly tastes like generic chocolate. A 70% bar made from organic, Direct Trade Certified cacao and ground on granite millstones keeps the acidity, fruit, and texture of the bean. Use the percentage to choose your sugar level, and use the maker to choose your flavor.
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