Simply Raspberry? (Divine Dark Chocolate with Raspberries)

Member Name: scuba_angel

Product:	Divine Dark Chocolate with Raspberries
Date:	04/11/09 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: not jsut bitter dark choc

Disadvantages: freeze dried fruit

I'm sure like many of us I like the odd sweet treat and feel the occasional pang of guilt when ignoring the Fairtrade options for cheaper bars of chocolate. I spotted this attatched to the front of a magazine recently and decided to treat myself, magazines are a rare luxury and I had gone out looking for chocolate....
So what is Divine.

Divine is a Fairtrade brand, meaning all the cocoabeans used in the manufacture of their chocolate are bought at a fair price from local growers - in fact Divine is 45% owned by the farmers who grow the cocoa.
The paper wrapper is rather unusual looking, with patterns and symbols in red and gold on a dark brown back ground, opening up the wrapper displays some printing on the underside which explains that all the symbols are Adinkra and hold meaning.

So about this bar.
I tend not to be a fan of dark chocolate finding it too bitter for my tastes so often choose dark chocolate which is flavoured to give it a little more sweetness, and lately have found a taste for raspberry (sadly mostly in vodka but hey ho its one of my 5 a day right?). Opening the paper wrapper there is an inner gold foil wrapper, inside this is the chocolate itself, breaking the foil there is a fairly strong smell of dark chocolate with little evidence of the raspberry flavouring. Breaking off a block the chocolate seems to have quite a rough surface texture and inside can be seen some very vivid red bits around the size of small 'millions' sweets. Again at this point there is little scent of the raspberry.

So putting that first small piece in to my mouth I first notice the strong bitter taste of the dark chocolate, as that first taste dies away the first hint of raspberry comes through. This taste is very strong and somewhat artificial tasting, despite the wrapper claiming natural raspberry and raspberry flavour - certiainly tastes little like the raspberry's I picked from the bush in my mums garden. There is a quite pleasant after taste of the bitterness of the chocolate and some of the sweetness of the raspberry.
Overall it is rather moreish but it is a very much let down by the freeze dried texture of the raspberry pieces and strong artificial taste. Each bar is 100g of chocolate and costs around £1.50, it is available from Co-Op and Booths supermarkets nationally. There are a large number of other varieties available and in future I would be more tempted by some of the other flavours, they also make drinking chocolate as well as hampers of related products, and even a cook book.

Summary: a fair trade chocolate to savour?