zChocolat Holiday zBox
Last year I reviewed a Valentine’s chocolate box from zChocolat, the luxury French chocolatier, and called it the prettiest chooclate box I’ve ever received. It was a beautiful Mahogany box, packed full of equally attractive chocolates.
You can imagine then that I was quite happy when zChocolat got in touch and offered to send a Christmas box for review. So what’s inside the fabric bag this time…?
Well it turns out it’s not another wooden box this time. It’s a simple, but elegant and well made card box with a snow flake on the box and… my name on the front!
To be perfectly honest, I had mixed feelings about the Mahogany box anyway. It was absolutely beautiful, and it’s a box I still have and use every day, but it felt a little over the top for a box of chocolates – even one designed to be a high end gift.
This box I like. It may be made of card, but it still feels like a quality product. And did I mention it has my name on the front??
Inside are two individual boxes, each containing 15 chocolates. The actual chocolates are largely unchanged from the box I received last year, and to tell you about them individually would take until Christmas next year. Suffice to say, they all use the same mould, but have their unique identifying number on the top, making the flavour easy to pick out from the little book that’s included.
The flavours are all typically French. There are lots of pralines, caramels, ganaches and subtle flavours. There’s nothing wildly experimental, just well tried, sophisticated flavour combinations.
Some of the textures are quite firm, and there are a few too many nutty chocolates in the collection for my own taste, but again, that’s quite typical of French chocolates.
Would I buy them as a gift? Potentially, yes. But I still think it’s a gift better suited to those with a sense of style rather than a taste for the finest chocolate. The presentation is immaculate and opening the box is sheer joy, but if you’re gift buying for a true chocolate connoisseur, you might still find more interesting chocolates at your local artisan chocolatier.
I consider zChocolat to be something akin to Hotel Chocolat on steroids. It’s a gift that has the wow factor and will be sure to make a good impression, but at £50 for this box – and that’s without the personalisation options – it’s certainly not cheap. But if you want someone to know you spent a bit of money on them, it’s a great option.
Information
- Buy it online from:
- Contains dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate (40, 70% cocoa solids).
- Cacao Origin: Ivory Coast, Venezuela
- Filed under assortment, christmas, france, zchocolat.
The candle warmers simply release highly scented Fragrances within the wax, without creating fire risk associated with lighting a candle.
There is a limited product line which reduces the need for me
to keep up on so many different products and options for customers.
Direct sale is not for everyone so before you get enticed with all that
loot, come to a decision on the marketing and advertising program.
Based on my personal experience, Zchocolat.com is a horrible service/website to use. First of all, they do not deliver on time and as promised. They changed my order shipping/delivery date several time and it was delivered several days later than initial plan. Surprisingly, a few days after the late delivery, I received another bill from them for some additional local custom delivery and monitoring fees. The original gift chocolate price was roughly $50 and they had initially charged me $37 for its delivery. The second bill asked for another $40 for monitoring of the same purchase. In other words, I was charged $77 for delivery of a $50 box of chocolate. They have poor customer service and refuse to acknowledge my purchase invoice. Definitely, the chocolates are not that good to worth all these extorted additional delivery/shipping/handling charges. I will never do business with them again and recommend all of you to stay away from them.