"Flavorientation" - a portmanteau of "Flavor" and "orientation" - has long been an integral part of our internal training for Dandelion team members. We are excited now to offer this dynamic class to anyone ready to delve seriously into the world of chocolate flavor and tasting!  

Through practice tasting in a small group of just eight students, our Flavor Manager, Karen, will show you how to improve your tasting abilities and better communicate what you are tasting. You'll learn how flavor develops over the life cycle of a chocolate bar, and how to identify flavors throughout the tasting process.

To record your tasting experience, Karen will instruct you in the use of Sample Ox, the app used for internal Dandelion Chocolate tastings, as she guides you through sampling nine full-size Dandelion Chocolate bars. This tasting set includes limited bars from our vault, the best-selling bar from our Tokyo factory, and other chocolate specifically selected to demonstrate the differences a harvest, chocolate maker, or content percentage can make in a finished bar.

About Karen 

Karen started at Dandelion Chocolate in 2013 as a chocolate maker, then became Production Manager for the team. She now spends her time as Flavor Manager and has revamped Dandelion Chocolate’s internal tasting procedures based on current scientific understanding. She worked with the developers of our sensory-data application, DraughtLab, to develop the chocolate portion of their public tasting app, Sample Ox. Read Karen’s blog post about running Flavorientation for Dandelion team members.