Chocolate Education, Evaluation & Competition Judging | #PSC 218
OVERVIEW: Episode 218 of #PodSaveChocolate takes an in-depth look at the IICCT and ICAs through the lens of educating people about chocolate, evaluating chocolate, and judging competitions, in comparison with beer and other beverages and foods.
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Episode 218
In PSC episode 215#, I explored the What, the Why, and the How of evaluating chocolate, using as examples current tools for describing flavor.
Clay Gordon
In PSC episode 217#, I explored the desirability of widely accepted classification systems as a foundation for competition judging, and by extension, for tasting education and evaluation generally.
Clay Gordon
In episode 218#, I am going to examine the most popular programs for tasting education and competition judging in chocolate, the International Institute for Chocolate & Cacao Tasting (IICCT) and International Chocolate Awards (ICA).
Some History Before We Dive Deep
In chronological order, before there were the ICAs and the IICCT, there was SeventyPercent.com, which began publication in May, 2001. The common connection between these three ventures is Martin Christy.
The Academy of Chocolate Awards (AoC) program launched in 2005 with co-founders that included Martin Christy and Kate Johns (of NudgePR who also co-founded Chocolate Week and The London Chocolate Show). Unhappy with some aspects of the AoC process, Martin left to co-found the International Chocolate Awards with Kate in 2012.
Updated: It’s not clear to me whether Maricel Presilla and Monica Meschini were a part of the AoC»ICA schism in 2012. When I first judged the ICAs I remember that Maricel was involved, and I do not recall when Monica came on board. I was unable to locate any definitive timeline information online.
Maricel, Martin, and Monica went on to launch the IICCT in 2016, building on work on the neuropsychology of taste and computational neural networking done by colleague Alex Rast (who is not listed as a partner in IICCT). Alex was an active contributor to SeventyPercent.com and has been active as an ICA judge, and there is now a preference that ICA judges are IICCT-certified.
In 2026, there is no daylight between SeventyPercent (which is now a portal for registration to access the IICCT online evaluation tool), the International Chocolate Awards, and the International Institute of Chocolate & Cacao Tasting.
My Motivation For This Episode
In episodes 215# and 217# I explored some of the history of classification for evaluation, education, and competition judging with a focus on beer, wine, and cheese.
What is important to understand is that those systems evolved over decades and centuries from categorization systems heavily rooted in Appellation (Geography, Process, Ingredients) history. Their recent evolution into the arena of competition judging has taken place over decades and the input of hundreds if not thousands of individuals, members of academia, and organizations. One example of this process is the evolution in beer from Michael Jackson’s 1977 seminal book, The World Guide to Beer (1977) to Fred Eckhardt’s Essentials of Beer Style (1989), to the current Beer Judging Certification Program’s competition-oriented categorization and judging guidelines.
Furthermore, beer, wine, and cheese had long histories of appreciation and connoisseurship that predated the Industrial Revolution that these modern systems – and the educational programs constructed around them – were built on.
Specialty chocolate emerged in the first half of the 1980s, got a kickstart in the last half of the 1990s, and became a cultural force barely a decade later.
The formal systems for chocolate appreciation and connoisseurship are barely 20 years old. And, unlike beer, wine, cheese, and other beverages and foods, there are no widely accepted standards for education, evaluation, that support competition judging.
However, the combination of the IICCT and ICAs is as close as we have at present.
As the most widely-cited certified educational program and the competition program with the most entries are both owned and operated by the same three people, it makes sense, to me, to take a critical peek under the hood and behind the curtains.
The information and opinions presented in this episode are based in:
- Interviews with IICCT students (Levels 1, 2, and 3);
- An examination of the information publicly available at SeventyPercent.com, the two ICA websites (www. and enter.), and the IICCT website; and
- Recent correspondence with Martin Christy.
My Goals For This Episode
My goal is not to undermine the good work being done by Martin, Maricel, Monica, and everyone else involved with the production of the IICCT tasting courses and the ICA competitions.
Collectively, there are tens of thousands of hours of hard work that has gone into them since 2012 and that work needs to be both acknowledged and appreciated for the good it has achieved.
Instead, my goal is to help set, and perhaps reset, expectations toward the methodologies, curriculum, accreditation, instruction consistency and quality, and judging criteria to help prospective students get maximum value from the IICCT classes and how the IICCT affects the ICAs.
Why? Because the IICCT and ICA are private enterprises owned and operated by a very small group of people that collectively dominate global mind share in chocolate education, evaluation, and competition judging. However, the owner/operators are not at all transparent about most aspects of their businesses. Even if the ICAs, IICCT, and co-founders collectively constitute the 800-lb (~363kg) gorilla in specialty chocolate education and competition, that does not justify holding them immune to close inspection and constructive criticism for the purpose of suggesting ways they can do better.
Listeners to my podcasts and readers of my writing know that I am a fierce advocate for more diversity, not less: in my opinion, it’s way too soon to focus in on a single, unified approach developed and championed, unquestioned, by a small handful of people without wider industry input.
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