This bar arrived in the post earlier this week – not a sample from the manufacturer, but a gift from my sister with a note saying “I saw this and thought of you”. I do love this job sometimes.
At first glance, the packaging is quite eye catching, but doesn’t quite hit the mark on closer inspection. It comes in a nicely designed box, but the chocolate inside is sealed in cellophane. It looks cheap and doesn’t quite fit with an (apparently) organic product. Then there’s the writing on the back of the box – 5 long paragraphs about how wonderful and fluffy Montezuma’s is and what genuinely nice people they are.
That set of some major alarm bells. Any company that feels the need to try to sell itself after you’ve already bought the product is usually hiding something. Before I’d even opened the box, I’d decided that the makers probably were not wonderful and fluffy at all.
But enough of all that. How does it taste?
Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult to describe how this bar tastes, because it doesn’t taste of much at all. I can tell you three things it doesn’t taste of though: sweet paprika, strawberry and, somewhat unfortunately, chocolate.
The packaging may extoll the virtues of Montezuma’s unusual ingredients, with phrases like “weird but great”, “delightfully odd” and “we never claimed to be conventional”, but there’s one key phrase that really stands out for me, and that’s “extremely subtle”.
The fact is that every single flavour in this bar is so subtle that you can barely taste it at all. The result is one of the blandest chocolates I’ve ever eaten. Think of it as Dairy Milk watered down by 50%.
The strawberry content consists of tiny flecks of freeze dried strawberry that are so “subtle”, the only way you can get the slightest hint of flavour is to let the chocolate melt away entirely first. Even then, you probably wouldn’t know it was strawberry if you hadn’t read it on the wrapper.
I cannot even taste a hint of paprika in this bar. And the 34% milk chocolate just tastes cheap. It’s not offensive tasting… it just does absolutely nothing but slowly fade away in my mouth.
I’m really disappointed by this bar. I’d had such high hopes for the flavour combinations, and I feel quite bad giving a negative review to a British chocolatier. But I’m more concerned that I have a dark chocolate bar still waiting to be reviewed. Please let it be better than this…
If you’re a long term Chocablog reader, you may remember that last year we had our own little award ceremony – The Chocsters – to coincide with The Oscars.
This year, we’re planning on doing the same (barring some kind of weird international Chocolate makers strike), but we wanted to give you a chance to have a say too. With that in mind, we’re going to have a “Readers’ Choice” category and let you decide the winner.
We’ve picked a shortlist of some of our favourite chocolates this year. All you need to do is vote (we’ve added links to our reviews to help you decide!). We’ll announce the winner (along with our own choices) on February 24th.
Voting has now closed
These chocolates were sent to us by Art Pollard of Amano Chocolate.
I was going to review them separately, but they’re so similar I thought I’d review them together. They’re both 56g bars of solid, 70% dark chocolate. The only difference is the origin of the cacao beans used.
But make no mistake, this is proper chocolate. From Utah, no less.
At first glance, both bars look exactly the same, with the only difference being the illustration on the front of the box. Indeed, if you stuff a chunk into your mouth and chew it like a chunk of Dairy Milk (or heaven forbid… Hershey’s)… they taste pretty much the same too.
You can tell you’re dealing with a quality product from the start. Each bar is packaged in a matt grey box with shiny gold highlights and carefully wrapped in gold foil. Opening the foil and you’re greeted with a beautiful, glossy bar of dark chocolate, which each square marked with the Amano logo.
In order to fully appreciate these chocolates, you have to eat them properly. That may seem a strange thing to do, but it’s not that difficult. Just place a chunk on your tongue and let it melt slowly. As it melts, it releases a whole host of interesting flavours, and you’ll begin to see just how different two identical bars made from different beans can be.
If you really want to explore all the flavours, Amano has an in-depth guide to tasting chocolate on their web site. It’s probably overkill for most people, but it does make interesting reading.
After extensive testing, I found the Madagascar bar to be my favourite. It’s slightly sweeter and fruitier than the Ocumare bar and really quite pleasant. If you only buy one bar, I’d recommend the Madagascar, but if you really want to learn about chocolate, get both and follow the Amano tasting guide and you’ll discover just how different two bars that superficially look the same can be.
For dark chocolate lovers, I can’t recommend these highly enough. If you’ve never had dark chocolate or simply don’t like it, you may not going to appreciate the work that’s gone into creating them.
It’s certainly not a chocolate you should stuff your face with or try to satisfy a sugar craving with, but a few chunks eaten slowly and savoured will definitely lift your day.
We’ve all seen the adverts on TV “This isn’t just any (insert name of food), this is Marks & Spencer (whatever)”. Well, this is Marks & Spencer 36% organic Fairtrade cocoa milk chocolate made from beans grown in Peru and Panama. If this chocolate were a dog it would be a pedigree pooch alright – impeccable credentials.
This is a seasonal bar, obviously made to reflect Christmassy flavours (yes, we’re still ploughing our way through the Christmas chocs here!) with the addition of three classic Yuletide spices. I have tasted Cinammon and coriander together in chocolate before, and rather enjoyed it, but I’ve never had anything that included nutmeg and therein lies my problem with this bar.
I just found it a bit too ‘spice’ and not enough ‘chocolate’. I’m sure that the chocolate they used tastes absolutely marvellous – you can feel it melting away as you taste it. It’s rich, creamy and probably packed full of all kinds of cocoa flavours, but the spices trample it to death. I found the nutmeg a particularly strong flavour, and it just killed off what ought to have been a rather lovely tasting bar of very good quality chocolate.
This isn’t just a mistake. This is a Marks & Spencer mistake.
