Chocolate follows the Everose alloy everywhere it goes. Twenty-three references in the current range carry the ground in one form or another, from the 28mm cases up to 42mm and across five different model lines, and every one of them is either solid Everose or the steel and Everose combination. No steel, yellow or white gold watch is built with it at any size, which makes chocolate the second ground after rose that the alloy effectively owns. Reference 126231 is the 36mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and Everose gold, carrying a fluted bezel, and this configuration pairs a chocolate dial set with twelve diamonds in gold settings, with no numerals on it, and a Jubilee bracelet.
The case is thirty-six millimeters in steel with an Everose gold bezel, crown and center links, and the rim is fluted, cut into a repeating series of angled facets rather than polished into a single band. The dial is chocolate, a deep warm brown developed alongside the alloy and pitched to sit with it, and twelve round diamonds are mounted at the hour positions in gold settings matched to the case. The mounts carry the arrangement here. Because the settings are the same warm metal as the rim and the center links, and because the ground is dark, each stone arrives inside a small bright frame that separates it from the dial before the stone itself does any work; on champagne or silver those mounts disappear into the ground and the stones carry the separation alone. There are no numerals, no batons and no printed indexes, so the ring and the date window are the only structure on the face. The Jubilee is built from five-piece links with the gold running in three narrow inner strips, which breaks the metal into small reflective units and gives the watch a bright wrist under a dark dial, which is the reverse of the Oyster version where broad brushed steel keeps the wrist matte. The five-piece construction also articulates more freely than a three-piece one, so the bracelet follows the wrist rather than holding a fixed curve, which on a thirty-six millimeter case makes the piece sit closer than its diameter suggests.
Hours, minutes, running seconds and a date changing in one step at midnight rather than easing into the following day. The self-winding movement in the 36mm case holds roughly seventy hours of running time, the same reserve the 41mm cases carry and considerably more than the 31mm and 28mm ones, which run a smaller movement of their own. Nothing else has been added. The dial is read by position alone, since a diamond in a gold mount carries no information about which hour it marks, and the ring works only while it stays even; the date window at three is the single break it has to absorb. On a dark ground that break is easier to take than on a pale one, because a white disc against brown reads as deliberate contrast rather than as a hole in the surface. At thirty-six millimeters the twelve settings also sit further apart than they do at 31mm, so the stones read as separate objects arranged on a field rather than as a continuous circle, and the ground keeps more of the watch. The seventy hours are worth stating alongside that, since they belong to the current generation of this case rather than to the dial and cover a weekend off the wrist with the watch still running on Monday.
Chocolate at 36mm is built on three references and all three are the Everose two-metal cases: this one, the domed 126201 and the diamond-set 126281RBR. The nine references at this size divide one per metal and bezel with nothing repeated, so those three are the whole of the alloy at this diameter, and they carry nine grounds each against seven on the steel reference, ten on each yellow one and fourteen on each white gold one. Within this reference chocolate is one of nine grounds across eleven configurations, ten of the twenty-two rows carrying stones on the dial, which puts this among the more heavily set references at the size without approaching the solid gold cases one size down. Rose is the other ground the alloy holds to itself here, and between them they are the two colors a buyer cannot have on any other case at this size. Both are warm and both were developed for the alloy, so the Everose references at 36mm are the only ones offering a color that was designed for the metal it sits in rather than borrowed from elsewhere in the range. Chocolate is offered here both plain and set, one of two grounds where both exist.
This suits a buyer who wants a dark dial that belongs to its metal rather than contrasting with it. Chocolate was developed for Everose and behaves accordingly: it warms in the same light the case warms in, and the two never separate the way a grey or a white would. The twelve stones then supply the only cool element on the watch, which is a narrower kind of decoration than a bright ground with a set ring would produce. Anyone who wants the same ground without stones should take the plain chocolate, which this reference also builds with applied markers and which is the same brown without the twelve cool points in it. Anyone who wants the color to sit on a quieter watch should take the domed reference 126201. And anyone who wants stones at the rim as well should take 126281RBR, which carries the identical dial roster under a set bezel and puts stones on both sides of the crystal. Between the three Everose references at this size a set chocolate dial exists in six watches, and the rim is the only thing separating them.
