Why the Academy of Chocolate is garbage

Comment

Comment by J'aime le Chocolat on February 25, 2009 at 3:43am

I have enjoyed reading the comments and must share with you that I fully agree on how fishy the AoC seems to be. I also saw how seventypercent adopted 1980's censorship techniques used by Communist regimes to limit thought, information and freedom. This typifies how the AoC are a minority community of inbreed halfwits! why ? needless to ask off course.

The behavior of protectionism is cleary despicable and the level to which the members are prepared to help each other out during this time of need is even more amusing! At the end of the day the entire saga is a comical way of trying to raise money to promote themselves at small village fairs. The issues and importance of promoting the entire value chain of cocoa from bean to bon-bon seems to have simply vanished unless this suits the Curley / Amadei clubs. To push a tiny inadequate Couverture maker in Italy over and above the clearly and globally acknowledged businesses such as Valrhona or Cacao Barry who have supported small artisans around the world is a clear indication of the tunnel vision the AoC has. Needless to say how important it is for all efforts to be supported and acknowledged, There is a time and place for this.

All businesses come and go and hence business is like the natural order, will have survivors and regrettably some casualties, The natural order is a very good example in my view on how we should regard the AoC and any other small isolated groups of similar nature. Eventually such inbreeding will reduce the genetic make up and the species with be wiped out by a simple common cold. Such is the natural order, survival of the fittest. I strongly believe that this is the same in business. I believe we are seeing the last days of the AoC as it cannot be allowed to survive as it stands today.

I am simply amused at how the ostentatious AoC have behaved and how childish they seem to be, It is clearly clumsy bully boy tactics which have not worked. Why? There is nothing in the British national press to support such an event. We see nothing that positions the AoC as the voice of authority. What a shame, as the original ideas and structure could have made the AoC into a great organization to be applauded.

It seems that change should be instigated, but if we learn from the past and current dictatorships, “talk” about word change means nothing. People have to be changed or replaced. Alternatively a new organization should be set up with more concrete foundations and more importantly – transparent. Long live chocolate and those who enjoy making and eating it.

Comment by Robert Shea on February 20, 2009 at 5:14am

- Open books... finances, procedures, the lot like a standard nonprofit in the US.
- Aesthetics should be a seperate catagory, not part of each score.
- Scoring should be done year round, with the awards addressing the highest scores in the given year to NEW/previously unreviewed products. (This would ease logisitical issues as well)

It is simply not possible to effectively taste more than a handful of complex foods in a day without them impacting each other... this is compounded when there is no opportunity to prime the tastebuds due to limited supply (1/4 truffle each?).

- Accountability of each judge, publishing of score and notes.

- The application of traditional statistical anomaly containment technqiues.

Comment by Artisan on February 20, 2009 at 4:56am

I am still hoping that the Academy will take some of the feedback on board and change practices next year. I have my views on what would need to change but i would be really interested in the forum view on what the Academy can practically do to try to sort out the issues we all raised.

My list would be in no particular order
- Reduce number of categories
- Reduce the mumber of product tasted to a level that allows proper judging
- participants to enter 1 product per category except for filled chocs, may be 3 max
- any previoulsy awarded product should not be re entered for a period of 3 years unless there was a change in recipe (gold awards should not be reentered for 3 years)
- Judging standards should be set and made public
- Judges panel should reflect broad section of industry and press, with a min of chocolate knowledge required
- Tasting should be really blind (i.e blindfolded) as shapes are still highly recogniseable
- Tasting should be recorded as individual scores, not shared and discussed as a group table
- Special awards not based on scores should be stopped completely
- Ideally some sort of independent organisation should oversee the organisation
- The chairman of the Academy should be replaced by someone who has not been tainted by strong link and personal perferences to a manufacturer. Indeed i would suggest a journalist.
- Membership of the academy should be much more widely increased to reflect the fine chocolate industry as a whole
- Some sort of feedback mechanism should be in place for all products entered- at the bare min the scores against the judging criteria
- Products to judge should be bought anonymously via retail chanels and not submitted by the chocolatier. Most chocolatiers worlwide have online sales facilities anyway.

that's start for me but what do you think?

Comment by Robert Shea on February 20, 2009 at 4:40am

The real poin here, is that chocolate is amazingly complex. A quick look at chocolatiers or better yet, chefs, indicates the huge range in perspectives. El Bulli uses Chocovic, given a low sevens by seventypercent.com... who you gonna trust? Is it even about trust?

With such a wide range of opinion, for the awards to nearly be mirrored from year to year, leaves only one possible answer.

Comment by Artisan on February 20, 2009 at 3:26am

Hardly any purprise in this years results when some gold winners reentered the same winning products as last year. What is the point?
And the Oscar for best film 2009 goes to.... Citizen Kane? And in 2010 and in 2011...

Comment by Clay Gordon on February 19, 2009 at 5:24pm

Just FYI, here is the official press release listing recipients of Academy of Chocolate awards for 2009.

Comment by Samantha Madell on February 16, 2009 at 8:45pm

From my reading of this debate (both here and over at seventypercent.com), it seems that the main defense being offered on behalf of the Academy of Chocolate is that running an awards event of this type is difficult and expensive, and the Academy is under-resourced for the job. Therefore, we chocophiles should shut up and tolerate the conflicts of interest and other problems that result from the Academy being under-resourced.

I don't buy that defense at all.

If the Academy of Chocolate doesn't have adequate resources (both human and financial) to run such an awards event properly and without bias, then they shouldn't attempt to run it at all.

Furthermore, for Academy members to respond to serious and legitimate criticism by shutting down discussion on seventypercent.com is unprofessional, to say the very least.

Also, for the Academy of Chocolate members to insist that their Awards results are unbiased is laughable.

To give one example: Sara Jayne Stanes is the Chairman of the Academy of Chocolate. She is also a member of the judging panel of the Academy of Chocolate Awards, and the author of the book "Chocolate: the Definitive Guide".

On page 84 of her book, Sara Jayne Stanes names a number of chocolate bars as her "personal favourites".

Sara Jayne Stanes's "personal favourites" include:


Amedei's Toscano 63% (winner of Academy of Chocolate's best bean to bar award 2008)
Amedei's Chuao (winner of Academy of Chocolate's best bean to bar award 2007*)
Amedei's Porcelana (winner of Academy of Chocolate's best bean to bar award 2007*)
Amedei's Toscano 70% (winner of Academy of Chocolate's best bean to bar award 2007*)
Amedei's Chuao (winner of Academy of Chocolate's Best Dark Chocolate Bar 2006)

* Note: the three award listings for 2007 are not typos. To be perfectly clear: Amedei won three "best bean to bar" gold medals in 2007.


To summarise the situation: the AoC Chairman's "personal favourites" have won the AoC's best bean to bar award five times in three years.

Sara Jayne Stanes may honestly believe that she is not biased ... just like 98% of drivers honestly believe that their driving skills are above average.

Unfortunately, honestly believing something doesn't have the power to make it true.


Finally, although I often disagree with the folks at Artisan du Chocolat, I sincerely commend the stand they're taking on this issue.

Comment by Robert Shea on February 16, 2009 at 6:26pm

See, the thing is, it's not about the winners or losers, it's about the method of getting there.

Comment by Artisan on February 16, 2009 at 6:56am

Last one. I has not realised that William had entered the same awarded products as last year. Surely this defies the purpose. should be one product entered per categoty and per participant (may be for filled chocs, this could go to 3 due to different flavours) and products with previous awards should not be entered again, unless there was a change of recipe. All seems common sense to me!

Comment by Artisan on February 16, 2009 at 4:14am

Would like to add that a similar thread has been locked on seventypercent.com
I would welcome the academy to have a grown up debate about their position instead of
censoring comments.

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