Cocoa Mountain Selection

Based in north west Scotland, Cocoa Mountain describe themselves as the most remote chocolate company in the UK. Their amazing looking chocolate bar is apparently known for its hot chocolates, but despite our attempts to get them to post us one, we had to make do with this intriguing looking box of chocolates instead.

Intriguing, because the packaging is clearly made from recycled materials, yet maintains a quality feel. It’s the perfect balance between a quality artisan product and a rustic home made one.

Open the box, and you’re greeted with an array of large truffles. All different, in various combinations of milk, dark and white chocolate, but none of them fully enrobed. There’s a bit of a monochromatic look to the selection, but I don’t think we can complain when everything comes in a slightly different shade of “chocolate”.

We have seen this kind of collection before, usually from small home-based chocolatiers like Helsham. The finish lacks the finesse of most artisan chocolates – there’s no perfectly tempered glossy squares here – so the quality of the chocolates comes down to the skill of the chocolatier and the choice of ingredients.

I’m pleased to say that these chocolates are winners. Cocoa Mountain are using quality ingredients throughout, sourcing them locally and through fair trade and organic suppliers where possible. There’s quite a lot cream in some of the chocolates, but it’s a fresh cream that you can actually taste.

I’m not going to go through each of the chocolates individually, because there’s no menu, and half the fun is trying to figure out what’s in them. Suffice to say that the flavours are all well chosen, with none of the chocolates being either too overpowering or too bland.

The sweetness level is spot on too, even with the white chocolates. I think I just had a white chocolate ganache with chilli and lime, covered in coconut… but it’s gone now, and just a happy memory. Perhaps I should take more time to review these, rather than just stuffing my face?

Nah.

I’m writing this review without having finished the box, partly because I know if I don’t stop, they’ll all be gone in a matter of minutes. But I also want to be able to share them with friends. I’m fairly certain the quality will be as good as the ones I’ve already tried.

You can order these online from Cocoa Mountain’s web site, but if I were you, I’d do it now before I buy the whole lot. Better still, get yourself up to north west Scotland. I hear the views are as good as the chocolate.

Grenada Chocolate Company 82%

A few days after I picked this bar up in Waitrose, the lovely people at Chococo sent me another. As it only takes a single bar to write a review, I’ll be giving away the spare bar at the end of this post!

The Grenada Chocolate Company is something of a marvel. They are probably one of the best advertisements for how chocolate can be produced ethically from bean to bar in the world.

Not only do they make their chocolate in a factory on the island, but the cocoa is grown there organically by a co-operative of farmers. The other three ingredients in their bars (sugar, vanilla and the emulsifier soy lecithin) are all sourced from equally ethical, organic suppliers.

There are no fancy fair trade logos on the packaging, but there doesn’t need to be. This is about as fair as chocolate gets, and that makes me happy.

Another thing that makes me happy is the packaging. Underneath the simple, brightly coloured paper wrapper is a thick copper coloured inner wrapper that reflects the colour of the chocolate inside.

Unfold it, and the rich, intense aroma of the chocolate inside hits you.

The design of the bar is the same as the 71% version that Simon reviewed back in 2008. It’s smooth and glossy with a reddish colour and a nice firm snap.

The flavour is intense, with an initial bitterness that quickly gives way to something a little softer. There are distint fruity and citrus notes in there, but the intensity and earthiness never completely fade, and the result is that this is just a little too intense for my preferences. Serious dark chocolate fans will love it though.

Luckily for me, I also picked up a bar of Grenada 60% with nibs at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair on Sunday (photos of that event on our Facebook page), which I’m really looking forward to trying.

Win a bar!

If you want to try this bar for yourself, you’re in luck. To be in with a chance of winning our spare bar, simply subscribe to Chocablog using one of the buttons at the top of the page (optional, but it will help us let you know when we’re giving more stuff away!), and tell us why you should win in the comments below.

The winner will be picked at random (but we’d still like to know why you deserve to win!) on Friday 10th September, and this little giveaway is open to all Chocablog readers, anywhere in the world.

Make sure you supply a working email address when leaving your comment, so we can get in touch, and only one entry per household, please!

Ritter Sport Selection

The wonderful thing about getting sent samples to review is that you end up with things you might not otherwise have tried. Despite positive reviews on Chocablog, I never had much interest in Ritter Sport. The name doesn’t appeal to me. Neither does the packaging. Maybe it has a more European style (does it, European readers?), but it just doesn’t spark up my own interest. Let’s move on now to what the taste test told me in these first four bars.

First up is a Milk Chocolate with Strawberry Creme, their newest bar. This one is decked up in pink to spread awareness about breast cancer. Ritter Sport is donating $100,000 to help the cause. Once I broke off a row to reveal the pink center, I immediately thought of the strawberry shortcake ice cream bars. Lowfat yogurt powder is listed in the ingredients, which is immediately apparent in the taste. A little crisped rice adds to the shortcake feel. The filling and chocolate work in more or less equal parts, though your attention naturally goes more to the strawberry. I can succumb to milk chocolate too well sometimes; this one started disappearing before me.

The Yogurt bar is also milk chocolate. Not being a yogurt fan, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, but was pleased to find that it has more of a plain milky sense than a yogurt one. The creamy white center reminds me slightly of cream cheese. The texture being constant, your taste buds start to pair the two flavors together, making it seem like an extra-milky chocolate. It wasn’t my favorite, but for fans of this sort of thing, go ahead and try it.

The Alpine Milk Chocolate is a 30% cocoa; in addition to the “100% milk from the Alps,” I spotted hazelnut paste in the list. It’s there to find in the taste, too, adding that hint of earthiness to keep the milky sweetness grounded. Including richness even at 30%, this one is quite enjoyable.

Interesting to note about the Milk Chocolate with Butter Biscuit is that it is chocolate surrounding one large biscuit versus containing tiny bits. Increasing the magnitude, here at least, also increases the experience. Plenty of pleasant biscuit with moreish milk chocolate.

I hate to use this phrase, but they were better than I’d expected. The Strawberry Creme and Alpine Milk stood out most to me; I have no doubt, however, that the rest will have no trouble finding a home.

Moko Chocolate Truffles

I don’t like writing bad things about small businesses, so I’m going to keep this review short.

They’re bags of “chocolate” “truffles”, that are made mostly of sugar and vegetable fat. They are basically the same, except one lot is rolled in cocoa powder (preferable), and the other in flaked chocolate. It’s somewhat unfortunate that the latter resembles Duc D’O's truffles which looked a little like they may have been fished from a toilet. Is it that difficult to make chocolates look visually appealing?

Looks aside, the presentation isn’t bad. They arrive in a bright pink box with cute phrases like “please be gentle with me” and “just unzip me” printed on it. They’re mail order only chocolates, and while the packaging doesn’t scream quality, it does the job.

The problem is with the product. They are way, way, way too sweet and fatty. I could just about manage one of each before the sugar overload started to get to me. I don’t know why they contain so much sugar, or have been made with so much vegetable fat, but the end result is just sickly.

So while I like the idea of a nicely presented mail order chocolate gift, and I don’t have any reason to believe that the folks at Moko aren’t lovely people, the product itself needs completely rethinking.