It’s an exciting time to be alive when a new type of chocolate is discovered. The last time this happened was 80 years ago when white chocolate first made its appearance. Joining dark, milk and white chocolate is a fourth type of cocoa goodness—ruby chocolate.

Ruby chocolate is made from the ruby bean, which naturally contains a berry fruitiness and reddish colour. While he’s keeping the process under wraps, Barry Callebaut, through his global R&D centres, found a way to unlock the natural attributes of the ruby bean, extracting them to create the new type of chocolate.

Kirsten Tibballs was one of the first in Australia to receive a sample of the chocolate.

“The ruby chocolate has a very distinctive berry flavour with subtle yoghurt tones,” she said.

When asked what products the chocolate would pair with she said, “I automatically think of vanilla, cream and passionfruit. These are the flavours I would usually combine with berries.”

Callebaut describes the taste of ruby chocolate as not bitter, milky or sweet, but “a tension between berry fruitiness and luscious smoothness”.

Chocolate critic Clay Gordon told Candy Industry most of the innovation around chocolate in the last century had focused on processing technology and reducing the amount of time it takes to produce chocolate, and that developing a process that preserves and enhances the light purple/lilac colour of select unfermented beans represented real innovation.

Ruby chocolate was revealed in Shanghai, China on September 5 but expect to wait between six and 18 months until you can get your hands on it.