What’s in a name
John's chocolate musings
Making bean to bar chocolate is some serious fun. I think the title of handmade bars should be serious fun too. So, where do I get the chocolate bar titles I use, you may or may not, be wondering? Sometimes it’s easy. The title writes itself. Like the don’t tell mother bar. It’s the standard 70%, but it’s good chocolate. The title comes from a story I heard about John Lennon. When he was making Double Fantasy. John Lennon kept going to a closet, and nobody could figure out why. He didn’t want people to tell Yoko what he was getting in the closet. So, he told the other musicians, “don’t tell mother.” Later, it was discovered John was keeping a stash of good chocolate in the closet, eating it, and didn’t want Yoko to know. So, my 70% became the “don’t tell mother.” Sometimes naming is a bit difficult. For example, the orange ginger bar. What do you call an orange chocolate bar? Just “orange bar?” Booooooringgggg. Nothing wrang my bell. What about rhyme? Maybe. Then again, nothing really rhymes with orange… and there it is, the title “nothing rhymes with orange.” It just works.
I could refer to the bar by initials. I guess that’s supposed to be catchy and clever. For example, the coffee chocolate bar could be the vary un-catchy “CC” bar. However, I wanted fun, interesting, and playful. I remembered The Squeeze have a song “black coffee in bed,” but for a chocolate coffee bar I wanted mocha. So, it became “mocha in bed.” Creating a raspberry pink peppercorn bar, was loads of fun but naming it RPP would have been shit. So, I thought let’s give it a title that is as fun to say as the bar is to eat. So, I went to The Purple One for Raspperry Peret.
At times some names work for a while, the 92% was called zimbo (from Echo and Bunnymen’s song “all my colors”), then the name needed work. I took a look at the bar, tasted it and went to Mr Lou Gramm because things are “either cherry red, or midnight blue.” and the 92% became “midnight blue.”
Anyhoooooooooooo, just thought it’d be good to explain the titles. Sorry, if you disagree, but, you know, you can’t always get what you want.
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