Lindt Excellence Caramel With Sea Salt

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on May 9 2012 | Leave A Comment

Shockingly, I’m back on the Lindt. This bar was one of a small selection given to us at the end of Lindt’s recent event at The Pearl restuarant, and the main reason I’m reviewing it is because it says “New” on it, and I want to see how it compares to that other new bar, the Lindt Wasabi which Simon reviewed last week.

As you can see, the format of the bar is exactly the same as the rest of the Excellence range. It’s a simple, thin, 100g bar divided into ten squares.

A quick glance at the back reveals that this bar uses the same, rather disappointing 47% cocoa solids chocolate as the Wasabi bar, so I was expecting it to be sweet – especially when combined with caramel.

The caramel comes in the form of hard, crunchy pieces scattered throughout the chocolate. Also scattered through the bar is a small amount of sea salt, but for me it’s not really enough to lift the flavour.

As you’d expect, the chocolate is very sweet, but the surprise is the caramel, which has a very burnt flavour, reminiscent of a crème brûlée. It’s a very distinctive flavour and probably won’t be to everyone’s taste, but for this particular bar, I think it’s a fairly good counterpart to the sweetness of the chocolate.

I wasn’t entirely sure the sea salt added much to the flavour. A small piece often contains no salt at all, but a second piece might contain a couple of large crystals of salt. I would rather have had smaller, more regular crystals, as I think they would have had a bigger impact on the overall flavour, without the slightly strange sensation of going from very sweet to very salty.

This is clearly confectionery rather than fine chocolate, and that’s something that’s reflected in the very reasonable £1.25 price tag. I managed to make my way through the bar (something I can rarely do with sweet confectionery chocolate these days), but I would still rather see the cocoa content bumped up to at least 60%. As it is, it’s too sweet for my tastes, but it’s an interesting take on the caramel & chocolate combination that’s worth trying if you have a sweeter tooth.

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Comments On This Post

  1. Ana

    It took me a while to realize that it’s really a new bar. I looks like the combination of their Caramel Dark & A Touch of Sea Salt bars. That sounds good to me 😀

    • Cindy Hancock

      My first bite had a very strong taste of coconut, but no coconut/coconut oil in the ingredients. Anyone else have the same experience?

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