Café König Spanish Pine Nut Bar

One thing I will say about Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport is that the shops have a pretty good selection of chocolate to choose from, and my eye was drawn to a couple of bars made by König. Why Spanish Pine nuts in particular I don’t know, but I couldn’t recall having eaten Pine Nuts with chocolate before, and the cocoa contant (and price tag!) hinted at a quality product.

At almost €4 a bar, this 36% cocoa milk chocolate was priced well above more familiar Swiss offerings, and so I was loking for something remarkable in terms of taste. The high cocoa content was a good start – 36% is a respectable amount of cocoa. There’s also natural vanilla in there as well, and 8% pine nuts – a not insignificant amount.

When I tasted a piece of this chocolate, I was immediately struck by the vanilla. It comes in on a wave of sweet, creamy milk chocolate and tends to dominate in the first moments of tasting. Once the chocolate begins to melt, the cocoa flavours start to develop, and they are light, soft and creamy. There’s a definite sweetness to the whole taste, and the cocoa is quite delicate, tempered as it is with the vanilla. Bite into a pine nut and you release a nutty, fresh flavour into the mix. I’m assuming that Spanish pine nuts are particularly good for flavour. These are very light, roasted so their kernels are like little puffs of nutty flavour which melt into the chocolate and vanilla giving the whole taste experience a little texture, o rnot as one prefers (you can always squirrel the nuts into a cheek for after the chocolate has gone).

In spite of the obvious ‘tourist souvenir’ wrapper, this chocolate is actually pretty good. It has a very soft. light mouthfeel, and delivers good flavour. Perhaps a little heavy on the vanilla for my tastes, but nonetheless very pleasant. There are definitely worse ways to spend your last few Euros.

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