Cocoa Farm Shiraz Chocolate Wine Barrels

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on January 6 2009 | Leave A Comment
Cocoa Farm Shiraz Chocolate Wine Barrels

Now that we’ve had the recent Cocoa Farm query cleared up, let’s get on to more interesting and important matters, such as their new Shiraz chocolate wine barrels.

Cocoa Farm is rapidly becoming known as THE chocolatier in Australia who actively pair up and celebrate one of our proudest products – no, not Hugh Jackman – our wines – and clever wineries and cellars now stock up their products as well as supermarkets and gourmet stores.

Cocoa Farm Shiraz Chocolate Wine Barrels

These individually-wrapped chocolates are actually a blend of milk and dark chocolate with 36% cocoa content, so there’s still enough to keep the Dark Side Dwellers interested and it shouldn’t scare off any milk chocolate fans either. Cocoa Farm’s own description of these ten gram barrels is pretty well perfectly written to attract any proud red-wine loving chocaholic worth their salt (or cocoa content):

“Sun ripened vine fruit bathed in a bold peppery Australian shiraz then combined with our rich blend of Cocoa Farm chocolate and crafted into a wine barrel shape to make them feel at home.” Very cute and very compelling…

The ingredients are fairly standard for the actual chocolate part, although, being a more milky chocolate there is more sugar than cocoa butter. What impresses me more is that they’ve added real Australian shiraz to the mix as well as grape seed extract, grape skin extract, natural vanilla and shiraz wine-infused currants. Nothing scary here.

How do they taste? Delicious. As soon as the wrappings were off I could smell the distinct red wine whiff of Shiraz and to my surprise the sweet and milky-ish chocolate was an excellent pairing for the booze-blown currants and the fruit-and-wine effect might be lost if it was drowned in a darker and bitterer chocolate. (I can’t believe I just wrote that!)

However, if anyone’s wishing to get all silly (known as ‘tired and emotional’ here in Australia) on them, you’d have to eat more than even I could manage, because there’s only 0.85% alcohol per 100 grams. Could be worth a try though.

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Comments On This Post

  1. Christine

    These sound devine!
    I love the Cocoa Farm orange chocolate but haven’t had a chance to try any other flavours as I haven’t found many places stocking them. I’ve seen a few online stores that have most of their range so I may have to dust off the old credit card 😉

  2. river

    I spotted Cocoa Farm chocolate in a little side street off Rundle Mall and bought a small bar of Lime and Chilli chocolate to try. When I got it home and unwrapped it, I was very disappointed to find the chocolate badly heat damaged, it was VERY white, dry and had no flavour left at all apart from the little bite of chilli. I threw the rest away. I’m willing to give it another try though.

  3. George Tweedale

    Hi Kath, I love your articles. I was wondering if you could help me. I am trying to find out where I can buy a few kilos of raw, dried, north Queensland cocoa beans. They can be fermented or not.
    Thanks, George.

  4. George
    Cocoa Farm are likely to be your best bet at this stage because they are the only chocolate company actually trying to grow cocoa beans in Australia. I’m not sure if they’ve had a first harvest yet, so when you find out, let me know!
    Best of luck!

  5. stormy

    Kath
    Well I am not 100% sure that the cocoa farm query has been cleared up. Kara’s post was correct there does not appear to be any Australian cocoa in these products and while they say they have changed their packaging/website they still infer that there is OZ cocoa in their products and they own the NQ plantations which they dont. This is misleading and last I checked deliberately decieving consumers is against the law. I certaInly hope that they do not try and align themselves with fairtrade based on this BS.

  6. George Tweedale

    Thanks Kath for your suggestion. I followed it and many others but failed. It seems as if although there has been a substantial harvest of north Queensland Cocoa beans. All of the harvest is under contract to the Australia Cocoa Company and they will not sell beans. While I understand that most people are only interested in processed cocoa products, there are those like me who are interested in the raw bean for its medicinal and health benefits. Once they do all there processing of the bean these benefits are lost. It just so happens that the raw bean has the highest amount of cancer fighting antioxidant in the vegetable kingdom and other very benifical rare substances that are lost in processing.

  7. Clare Page

    Hi Kath,
    Im getting married soon at a winery and thought these little barrels would be a perfect favour for my guests. Im trying to find a website where I can buy them online but cant seem to find any. Can you help??/

  8. Congratulations Clare! The reason you’ve had some difficulty finding ‘Cocoa Farm’ on the web is because their company name is ‘Farm By Nature’. You could try visiting their website – http://www.farmbynature.com.au or emailing them – info@farmbynature.com.au or calling 1800 262621.
    Good luck, Kath

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