Craft Chocolate 101

The number on the front of a chocolate bar is the share of the bar that comes from the cacao bean itself, cocoa solids plus cocoa butter. This guide decodes it properly: why a well-made 68 percent can beat a harsh 85, and how to read the rest of the label for quality.

How cocoa percentage shapes bitterness, sweetness, richness, and melt, from 40 percent milk chocolates to 85 percent dark bars. A practical reference for finding your personal sweet spot on the cocoa scale, whether you snack, bake, or pair chocolate with wine.

Single origin means the cacao came from one defined place, and like wine, that place shapes the flavor. Blends are built for consistency instead. Neither is automatically better, and this guide explains how to read both on a label, plus what traceability says about ethics.

The full label walkthrough: percentage, ingredient list length, whether cocoa butter or cheap substitute fats carry the bar, origin details, and what certifications do and do not guarantee. Five minutes of reading that upgrades every chocolate purchase you make after it.

Apply the lesson: CRĀVA's dark bar sits at 78 percent cocoa, high enough for deep flavor and low sweetness, balanced enough to stay smooth. And because the sweetener is allulose, the usual percentage-to-sugar math changes entirely. Craft chocolate logic, upgraded.

Milk chocolate gets dismissed by purists because mass-market versions drown the cocoa in sugar. CRĀVA's version proves the category wrong: creamy and rich, with pure cocoa doing the talking and rare sugar replacing the sugar overload. Craft standards, comfort flavor.

Everything in this stack comes together in CRĀVA's own bean-to-bar story: careful sourcing, small batches, and recipes refined over a year and a half. Once you can read a label, this page shows you what a maker who sweats every line of it looks like.