If you know, you know. And if you don't, this is a good place to begin — because the bar in question is made from one of the oldest and rarest cacaos on Earth, grown in a valley most people will never reach, by a maker who sold her home to get to it.

Let me get the awkward part out of the way. The single highest-scoring bar of the 2026 European Bean-to-Bar competition — higher than every dark bar, every heroic 100% slab, every serious-faced single origin in the room — is a white chocolate with flowers in it.

Sometimes you unwrap a bar and it's wrong. A pale, dusty, greyish film has crept across the surface, the gloss is gone, and it looks faintly stale. It's called bloom — a lovely word for something so disappointing — and it's one of the most common questions we're asked.