Heavens Above Milk Chocolate With Coffee

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on April 1 2008 | Leave A Comment

I spotted this bar (along with its siblings) in John Lewis and I have to admit, it was the packaging that caught my eye. A cardboard box with a 50s style colourised photo and a funny caption. On closer inspection, I discovered the caption wasn’t particularly amusing, and that was when I remembered that we’d encountered Heavens Above before (and the reaction wasn’t particularly good).

I bought the entire range (only 3 bars) to see if things had improved.

When I got home I inspected the box further and noticed two things. Firstly, the blurb on the back:

A tongue in cheek range of scrumptious chocolate gifts with a hint of naughtiness.. only for those with a ‘taste’ of humour

That’s a little worrying. I always get a little concerned when a product feels the need to tell you how much fun it is, or that you’ve got to be a very special person to appreciate it.

The second thing I noticed was that the ingredients simply list “coffee flavour” – which I presume means some kind of artificial flavouring rather than real coffee.

Inside the box, the chocolate itself is wrapped in cellophane rather than foil, which just looks cheap. Potentially another sign that this chocolate isn’t quite as good as it claims to be.

The bar itself is fairly pleasant to look at and has a nice, mild, coffee aroma. It’s nothing special. The “chunks” aren’t particularly well defined, and there’s no logo stamped on them. So far, everything about this bar reminds me of the awful Montezuma’s range I reviewed last year.

So I was actually pleasantly surprised when I bit off a chunk. The 30% milk chocolate is smooth and creamy. The coffee taste is just right. It’s not so strong that it over powers the chocolate flavour. I ended up demolishing this bar in half an hour (without even noticing I was eating it).

Despite all my reservations, this bar is actually pretty good. My issue is that it’s trying to be a premium chocolate, and it’s clearly missing the mark there. I paid £3.50 for this 70g bar of chocolate, which is way over the odds. If it were under £1.50 – or simply made with better quality ingredients and more attention to detail – I’d recommend it. But at that price, I don’t think I can.

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Comments On This Post

  1. The ex-high school English teacher still lurking in me also takes issue with scrumptuous being spelled ‘scrumtuous’ as well…. Sometimes ‘humour’ disguises some pretty un-funny contents.

  2. Dom (Chocablog Staff)

    Gah. The typo is of course mine. I’ll go sit at the back of the class.

  3. Simon

    Should I mention ‘toungue’ at this point then?

  4. Dom (Chocablog Staff)

    No!

  5. Simon

    OK, I won’t.

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