"70% cacao" is one of the most recognised claims on a chocolate label. It signals, to most consumers, something specific: this is serious dark chocolate. This is the good stuff. This is the number that separates the chocolate worth eating from the chocolate that is merely sweet.
The problem is that the percentage tells you almost none of what you think it tells you.
Understanding what it actually means — and what it doesn't — is one of the most useful things a chocolate buyer can know. It will not make you a chocolate snob. It will make you a better-informed one.
What the Percentage Actually Means
The cacao percentage on a chocolate label is a ratio. Specifically, it is the percentage of the chocolate's total weight that comes from cacao-derived ingredients — everything that originated from the cacao bean, including cocoa mass (also called chocolate liquor), cocoa butter, and cocoa powder.
The remaining percentage is everything else: sugar, milk solids (in milk chocolate), vanilla, emulsifiers, and any other additions. A 70% dark chocolate is, by weight, 70% cacao-derived ingredients and 30% everything else — primarily sugar.
This is useful information. It tells you, roughly, how sweet the chocolate will be. Higher percentage means less sugar, which generally means less sweetness and more cacao character. This is why percentage became a shorthand for quality: more cacao, less sugar, more serious.
But the shorthand breaks down the moment you ask the next question: what kind of cacao-derived ingredients?
The Cocoa Powder Problem
Cacao-derived ingredients are not all equal. The three main ones — cocoa mass, cocoa butter, and cocoa powder — are produced at different stages of cacao processing and have significantly different flavour profiles and costs.
Cocoa mass, also called chocolate liquor, is the pure ground cacao bean — the whole bean, with all its fat and flavour intact. It is the most flavourful and the most expensive of the three.
Cocoa butter is the fat extracted from the cacao bean. It contributes to the melt, the texture, and the mouthfeel of chocolate, but relatively little to the flavour. It is expensive — cocoa butter is in high demand from the cosmetics industry as well as the food industry — and is sometimes partially replaced with vegetable fat in lower-quality chocolate.
Cocoa powder is what remains after the cocoa butter has been pressed out of the cocoa mass. It is significantly cheaper than cocoa mass, and it has a more limited, less complex flavour profile — the pressing process removes much of the fat that carries flavour.
Here is the problem: all three of these count toward the cacao percentage on the label. A chocolate manufacturer who wants to claim a high cacao percentage at a lower cost can use a higher proportion of cocoa powder — the cheapest of the three — and still hit the number. The label says 70%. The flavour tells a different story.
This is not a hypothetical. It is a common practice in mass-market chocolate production. The percentage is accurate. The implication — that a higher percentage means higher quality — is not.
The Quality Problem
Even if a chocolate uses only cocoa mass — no cocoa powder inflation — the percentage still tells you nothing about the quality of the cacao itself.
Cacao quality varies enormously. Fine flavour cacao — the varieties grown for complexity and character, typically Criollo, Trinitario, and some Nacional varieties — represents a small fraction of global cacao production. The majority of cacao grown worldwide is bulk commodity cacao, grown for yield rather than flavour, fermented and dried to minimum standards, and processed in ways that prioritise consistency over character.
A 70% chocolate made from fine flavour cacao, well-fermented and carefully processed, will taste completely different from a 70% chocolate made from commodity cacao. The percentage is identical. The experience is not. The first will have fruit notes, complexity, a long and evolving finish. The second will taste of generic dark chocolate — bitter, flat, one-dimensional.
The percentage cannot tell you which one you are holding. Only the tasting can.
The Processing Problem
Even with good cacao, the processing method matters enormously — and the percentage tells you nothing about it.
Alkalization, also called Dutch processing, is a treatment applied to cocoa powder (and sometimes cocoa mass) that neutralises its natural acidity, darkens its colour, and produces a milder, less complex flavour. Alkalized chocolate looks darker and more serious. It is, in terms of flavour complexity, less interesting than non-alkalized chocolate made from the same cacao.
If the ingredient list includes "cocoa processed with alkali" or "Dutch-processed cocoa," the chocolate has been alkalized. The percentage may be high. The flavour complexity has been deliberately reduced.
Conching — the process of continuously mixing and aerating chocolate over an extended period — also significantly affects flavour. Longer conching produces smoother, more refined chocolate with better flavour development. Shorter conching is cheaper and produces a rougher, less developed result. The percentage tells you nothing about how long the chocolate was conched.
What to Look for Instead
If the percentage is an unreliable guide to quality, what should you look for?
The ingredient list. A short ingredient list is a good sign. Cocoa mass (or cacao), cocoa butter, sugar, and perhaps vanilla and an emulsifier — this is what good dark chocolate looks like. Cocoa powder appearing before cocoa butter in the list suggests a cheaper formulation. Vegetable fat appearing anywhere suggests compound chocolate rather than real chocolate.
Whether it has been alkalized. "Cocoa processed with alkali" in the ingredient list means the flavour complexity has been reduced. Not a dealbreaker, but worth knowing.
What the maker says about the cacao. A chocolate maker who uses quality cacao will tell you about it — the origin, the variety, the fermentation style. A maker who cannot or will not tell you where the cacao comes from is telling you something.
The melt. Real chocolate — made with cocoa butter rather than vegetable fat — melts at body temperature, which means it melts cleanly and completely in the mouth. Compound chocolate, made with vegetable fat, melts more slowly and leaves a slightly waxy residue. This is one of the most reliable quality indicators available to any consumer, and it requires no expertise: just attention.
The finish. Good chocolate has a finish — a flavour that continues to develop after the chocolate has melted, that changes and evolves over thirty seconds or more. Mediocre chocolate has a finish that disappears quickly, leaving only sweetness or bitterness. The length and complexity of the finish is one of the best indicators of cacao quality available to the taster.
What This Means for Our 90%
Our 90% Dark Ganache is the clearest illustration of why percentage is not quality. Ninety percent is a number that most people associate with aggressive bitterness — the kind of chocolate that is eaten for health reasons rather than pleasure.
Ours is not bitter in that way. The reason is the cacao: beans with genuine natural sweetness, well-fermented, carefully processed, not alkalized. At 90%, with almost no added sugar, the natural character of the cacao is the dominant flavour — and that character includes sweetness, fruit notes, and a long, complex finish that has nothing to do with the sugar that isn't there.
The percentage is 90. The experience is not what the percentage predicts. This is the point.
When you taste chocolate, taste it. The number on the label is a starting point, not a conclusion.
Taste what percentage can't tell you in our Cavasa Chocolates collection — made in Ambur, Tamil Nadu, from cacao chosen for flavour, not for the number on the label. 🍫
