Milk, dark and now 'ruby': will this new form of chocolate change your life?

Going cocoa: Barry Callebaut's new ruby chocolate

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or the last 80 years, chocolate has come in three main forms: milk, dark and white. But now one of the world’s largest manufacturers has come up with what they claim is an entirely new form: ruby chocolate.

Barry Callebaut announced their new invention yesterday with global hoopla and after a peroid of great secrecy. Samples of the new chocolate were distributed at the launch in Shanghai and delivered under plain wrapper to experts all over the world, and The Telegraph was among the earliest recipients.

Ruby chocolate - named for its dark pink shade - is the result of a discovery made a dozen or so years ago by one of the firm's researchers and since refined by their technicians - and polished by their marketing folk..

Barry Callebaut’s researchers found “new unique attributes” within the beans they had been sourcing for years. After many years of work, they have been able to isolate and scale up these attributes to the extent that the new form of chocolate can now be marketed to their customers worldwide.

  

Apparently the new chocolate fulfils “a new consumer need found among millenials... hedonistic indulgence”. As a non-millenial who is no stranger to either hedonism or indulgence, I feel oddly excluded, but nonetheless determined to tuck in. I am also a highly experienced chocolate taster, and I can't honestly say that I was blown away by the ruby experience.

  

It tastes very much like white chocolate infused with red berries - though Barry Callebaut insist that it is no such thing. But it is a pretty shade, and a pleasant flavour, and since Barry Callebaut supply colossal quantities of chocolate to the catering trade and to other manufacturers, chocolate fans can expect to come across it very soon.