Hazel Lee, Creator of Taste With Colour, in Bangkok, Thailand

What is Taste With Colour?

Taste With Colour: The Chocolate Tasting Flavour Map is a simple and approachable tool to help people discover flavours with colour.

On my journey of tasting fine chocolate, I (Hazel Lee) sometimes struggled to find the words for the flavours that I was experiencing. I would “see” a colour (or colours) in my mind related to the chocolate but I couldn’t always name the specific flavour notes. Through many chocolate tastings, I used a variety of different tools to help me identify flavours. There were no tools which simply categorised flavours by colour.

I developed Taste With Colour to connect the colours which I see in my mind with over a hundred different flavour notes that I have frequently found on my journey of tasting fine chocolate. This association of colour and flavour is one example of crossmodal correspondence: defined as a tendency for a sensory feature, or attribute, in one modality, either physically present or merely imagined, to be matched (or associated) with a sensory feature in another sensory modality (see Parise & Spence, in press; Spence, 2012).

Since its launch in July 2017, Taste With Colour has been sold to over 30 countries and translated into 9 languages including Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Thai, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Russian, and French. Tasting and painting workshops have been held in the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, Dubai, Thailand, Spain, Grenada, Brazil, Germany and beyond!

Learn how to use Taste With Colour as a consumer or industry professional.

How was Taste With Colour created?

I developed Taste With Colour to help myself identify flavours during my regular chocolate tastings and judging of chocolate awards. I wrote a list of the most common flavours that I found on my journey of tasting fine chocolate and categorised them by colour. I created a watercolour painting with the different colours, added the flavour notes on top and printed the artwork on a beautiful textured paper to complement the watercolour design. 

About the Creator

Hazel Lee has been a member of the fine chocolate industry since 2013. Born into a food-loving family, she took her passion to university and graduated with a degree in BSc Food Science (International) from the University of Leeds in 2012.

Hazel is now a full time Food Product Development Scientist, part time Chocolate Consultant, member of the Academy of Chocolate, judge for the Academy of Chocolate Awards, Northwest Chocolate Awards, Great Taste Awards and Premio Bean to Bar Brasil, Home Bean to Bar Chocolate Maker and Cocoa Adventurer. She spends her free time hosting tasting and painting workshops using Taste With Colour, visiting chocolate factories and cocoa farms, judging chocolate awards, taking part in chocolate events across the world and, especially, eating plenty of fine chocolate!

Learn more about Hazel on her website.