More chocolate from Slovenia, courtesy of Barica, our Slovenian chocolate exporting friend.
This is part of a range made by Benedict, a family run business which has been operating in Ljubljana for some fifteen years or so.
The chocolate is a 64% cocoa bar, and the label on the back of the box very kindly explains that Teran is a Slovenian red wine, produced on the Kras plateau from a grape variety called Refosk.
When I was asked what sorts of chocolate I’d be interested in I asked for something unique to Slovenia, and with this bar Barica came up trumps.
It has a good dark colour to it, a pleasant glossy sheen, and a rich aroma. The wine content has made the chocolate a little softer than one might expect, and lends it a very pleasant, subtly alcoholic note to the overall taste. When tasting this chocolate the slightly sweet winey top notes are there seconds before the darker, more complex cocoa flavours. As the cocoa notes build on the palate you taste deep chocolatey flavours with hints of coffee and tobacco, and the finish is a lively blend of bittersweet cocoa and a soft, mildly alcoholic note.
I liked this a lot. While it my not have been the darkest of dark chocolate, the overall taste was very satisfying, and the fact it was made with something unique to Slovenia was an added bonus. According to the website (for lovers of sweat (sic) treats, but how good is MY Slovenian?) this is one of some 76 bars in the range! I have three, and if they’re anything like this I’m a very lucky man.
We’ve reviewed a few of Nestlé’s Heaven range before and so far our reaction has been positive, so I had high hopes for this – despite the fact that it was obvious when I bought it that the picture on the packaging would have no real relation to the actual product.
So instead of the rather tempting looking white vanilla balls the box shows, what we have here is 12 large, thin squares of dark chocolate with a white vanilla filling. Equally tempting, but they just as well have shown pictures of fluffy orange sheep on the front. (And ff they had, I would almost certainly still have bought it.)
The dark chocolate is listed as 43% cocoa solids, so it’s not particularly dark, but it is very nice. Nestlé haven’t exactly been generous with the chocolate here, but the flavour still comes through, despite the sweetness of the vanilla filling inside.
And make no mistake, this is a very sweet, very rich bar. It demands to be eaten delicately, one square at a time, rather than being stuffed into your mouth in one go – however tempting that might be (and in the interests of science, I did of course, try this). That vanilla truffle filling, while delicious, isn’t particularly light. It’s soft, and creamy, but so rich, it could almost contain alcohol, but there’s none of that listed on the ingredients.
I have a feeling that this will be too rich for some and too sweet for others. But for me it really was heaven. Kind of like a more sophisticated version of Kinder Chocolate. If you can resist the urge to eat it all in one go, then I highly recommend it.
Dear, sweet, darling Matthew Thorpe, he of the South Australian Lindt distribution (and generous sharing) and radio fame, gave me a couple of tins of Lindt’s new hot chocolate flakes to try. They’re available at a few selected supermarkets who recognise that not all of us want to mix up some dusty old cocoa powder with hot water and sugar as an uninviting winter treat.
Oddly enough, both tins are the same colour. As a long-term lover of Lindt (try saying that with a mouthful of Lindor balls), it strikes me as unusual that the milk chocolate flavour isn’t in a red tin like their blocks and balls. There’s a teeny weeny difference in the top banding – bronze for the dark and a goldish band for the milk, but it would be too easy to assume that they’re both the same flavour.
Until you open the tins, that is. The dark chocolate flakes on the left are distinctly darker, with that familiar, heavenly aroma. The milk flakes are on the right and also invited me to stick my nose in and inhale their sweet invitation. Matt told me that the chocolate is literally just shaved straight from a large block, so if I was desperate, I could just dip a spoon in and eat it. Handy to know for any future hard times or if no-one else was around…..
Like all good hot chocolates, it doesn’t pay to be stingy with the servings and Lindt is a proud supporter of this view, stating that six teaspoons are the recommended amount per cup. They suggest blending the flakes with about half a cup of milk which is then microwaved for about 30 seconds per cup. Then the mixture is stirred, topped up with more milk and microwaved again, giving it a thorough stir when it is taken out. This photograph gives you a good idea as to what sixty seconds of effort produced – no, the biscuits didn’t magically appear; Sapphire and I made them. The drink itself looked fluffy and fragrant and just what we wanted on a cold winter’s afternoon.
No sugar is needed as there’s enough in the chocolate itself and even though we used skim milk it still produced an attractive ‘crema’ found in the top quality coffees made by skilled baristas.
And the taste? How does one describe it without resorting to clichés? Liquid velvet for the tongue; like waves of warm love rolling amongst a field of taste buds; or as though Uma Thurman or George Clooney had reincarnated themselves as a hot drink that was waiting, yearning, dreaming only of you. Pretty bloody fantastic, in other words.
When the lovely people at Skelligs and Cocoa Bean sent me my box of goodies, I found this brown paper bag nestled among the more traditionally packaged treats. The tag told me that it contained a chocolate ‘bark’ (a term I have never come across before) which was a mint brittle. It also carried what looked like a hand stamped logo/design of some islands – very piratical! I half expected a rum confection.
The contents turned out to be wafer thin fragments of dark chocolate – 53.8% to be precise – which contained little grains of mintiness. The moment I popped a few pieces in my mouth I knew this was mint brittle. Like a breath of fresh air, the mint element swept through my mouth and completely took over my tastebuds. It was quite a shock just how minty this stuff was – there was almost no room for the chocolate flavours to come through, until the initial flood of flavour from the little crystals settled down a bit and I could discern a little more of the dark cocoa flavours lurking beneath.
I’d have to say that this isn’t chocolate for the serious chocolate lover, but it is definitely ‘proper’ chocolate. It’s still possible to taste the chocolate after the mint has done the wild thing all over your tongue, but you’re never going to be sat there with your eyes closed trying to pick out the various flavour notes contained in the cocoa as it melts away on your tongue. Having said that, this stuff will give Lindt’s Mint Intense bar a serious run for it”s money, and I for one would prefer Skelligs’ version.
If you’re a fan of minty chocolate (and I know there are a few in my house, judging from the requests for more) then I’d suggest tracking some of this stuff down. It scores big on both mint and chocolate, and it’s handmade by some very nice Irish ladies in a lovely part of the world.
