This reduces the judging load and fatigue on the judges’ palates. These are the entries that make it through an initial triage judging phase, sorting out entries the judges believe are not of sufficient quality to be considered for judging for an award. One area in which the International Chocolate Awards provides more data is they publish lists of Grand Jury finalists. This could change if I can get the bean origin for the entries who did not provide it, and this is why I am asking entrants to supply me with the information. It will be interesting to see if/how this regional influence plays out in the Worlds round. In the Americas round, Ecuador was the most popular origin, again due to the influence of a single maker, Pacari.

In the Asia-Pacific round, Taiwan was the most popular origin, again because one maker Fu Wan, won more awards than any other maker and listed Taiwan as the origin for their entries. In the European Bar competition the most popular origin was Nicaragua, which makes sense when you consider Friis-Holm won more awards than any other maker and uses Nicaraguan beans exclusively. > Initial analysis so far across the European Bar, Asia-Pacific, and Americas round potentially shows the influence of makers on which origins are likely to be most popular. There will be analysis within each awards program and analysis across all of the awards programs for which I can get data. While the first stories have been about the 2018 ICAs – which is simply because there are more data points in each entry and more overall competitions to analyze – the ultimate goal is to include the Academy of Chocolate awards (which I have begun analyzing), the Northwest Chocolate Festival awards (I am still searching for the winners for two years), and the Good Food Awards (chocolate and confectionery categories) at a minimum. > The goal of this analysis to provide a better understanding of which companies and which origins are winning awards, and to discover commonalities and differences between competitions (e.g., does the regionality of a competition affect origin popularity and why (it appears to), among other statistics. I have posted a number of stories already analyzing various 2018 International Chocolate Awards (ICA) competitions.

Web page shuffle when shut down