This Template Has A Horizontal Scrollbar Tsk (Dolfin in general)

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	Dolfin in general
Date:	22/09/02 (338 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Yumptious., Different., Posh.

Disadvantages: Expensive., Hard to source.

Dolfin chocolate is lovely. Well, all chocolate is lovely, but Dolfin chocolate is particularly so. It's Belgian, of course, and very, very posh, of course. And it's lovely. They're not an old, traditional, established chocolate manufacturer, Dolfin, they're more the bright young things of the confectionary world. The Poncelet brothers (sorry, silly name, I know, but it's chocolate so I don't mind and I'm sure you'll forgive them too), saw that fashionable posh choc niche and for the past ten years or so they've been helping fill it nicely. According to them, "Dolfin had the wonderful idea of combining the strength of a high-quality chocolate with the subtle flavours of carefully selected natural ingredients. Tasteful chocolates created with patient skill is what you can expect from Dolfin, which offers a range of completely new delights and refined harmonies." See? There's posh. I did tell you. What that means is that they don't make chocolates. They make chocolate. Geddit? There are flavours, but no fillings. It's good old, pure, fashionably naturally ingrediented (ooh, I think I just made up a word, well, a verb. I'm excited, it's allowed) chocolate, and you buy it in bars and in little neapolitan type squares. I'm going to tell you of the delights of the neapolitan squares, or carres.

There are thirteen flavours, I'll list them all for you:

Noir 52% (dark 52% cocoa)
Noir 70% (dark 70% cocoa)
Noir 88% (dark 88% cocoa)
Au Lait (milk)
Noir Nougatine (dark with nougat)
Lait Nougatine (milk with nougat)
Lait Cannelle (milk with cinnamon)
Menthe (dark with mint)
Orange (dark with orange peel)
Citron (dark with lemon peel)
Cafe Lait (milk with coffee)
Cafe Dark (dark with coffee)
Earl Grey (dark with earl grey)

You can buy them in boxes of 15, 24 or 48 pieces apparently, and in different assortments, but here in the U
K I've only ever found the boxes of 48 in two different selections: Ebene, a mixture of the Noir 70% and the Noir 88% and Panache, a mixture of all the above excepting the cinnamonny one, the minty one, the lemony one and the Noir 52%. So let's talk about the Panache.

In this selection Dolfin plain dark chocolate comes in two cocoa strengths. We all know (all meaning anyone with more than a passing interest in chocolate, meaning an interest bordering on obsession, meaning us all, see?) that a good plain chocolate needs to be at least 70% cocoa solids. Dolfin do a 70% cocoa solids one, of course. It's somehow nicer than Lindt Excellence (yes, hard to believe I know, but it's true). It's very dark in colour and is a little bit shiny. It smells of chocolate heaven and the pieces snap from the bar properly ? no wimpy little "puh" of a noise meaning that the choc you're about to consume is far, far too gooey and sickly and well, just not as nice as it would be if it were Dolfin chocolate and the pieces snapped with a satisfying crisp "crack!" of a noise (note the exclamation mark, it's important). Oh, and how does it taste? Well, it's posh, 70% cocoa chocolate. It tastes like that. Like Lindt, but nicer somehow ? sweet but bitter, meltingly, beautifully, gorgeously chocolatey, but with a kind of sharpness even as it melts on your tongue.

Imagine that. Mmmm. Now, imagine that, but deliciously more so. Close your eyes for a moment or two and think hard. Got there? Good. Because Dolfin also do another plain, dark chocolate. This one has, ooh, this Dolfin chocolate has 88% cocoa solids. You know what? I don't think you got there at all. This one, this 88% COCOA SOLIDS Dolfin chocolate, defies description. It does. It's all the above for the 70% version but more so. It's all you just imagined, but more so. It's um? it's yumptious, and here in the Murphy, very chocolatey househo


ld, yumptious is a word reserved for very few things. Dolfin 88% cocoa solids (Deviation? No. Hesitation? No. Repetition? Hands up, you got me) is one of them. Every bar of dark chocolate you've ever enjoyed and savoured you'd have enjoyed and savoured more had it been a Dolfin 88% cocoa solids gorgeous little square of dark chocolate. Really you would, trust me, I'm an expert. You haven't lived if you haven't tried it. It's so rich, it's so bitter-sweet that even I can't eat more than a few carres in one go. Truly. If you're believing me, and you should believe me, and you're considering trying this yumptious stuff then for your first time make sure you get it right. Don't eat it on the run, as a snack. It would be sacrilege. Don't eat it after a huge meal. Eat it specially, at a nice quiet time, with either a glass of ice cold, dry white wine, or with a cup of black, strong coffee (and let yourself off the decaf, it's an indulgence, remember). With the wine the sharpness will come through before the sweetness, and with the coffee it will be the sweetness you taste first.

But this box of chocolates holds more delights for you, the deliciously creamy milk chocolate "Au Lait" which again is similar to but better than Lindt - think that wonderful chocolate in the Lindt Easter Bunny, but think of it refined even more and you're about there - and also the flavoured carres, the flavours being those natural ingredients the company's blurb I quoted earlier was boasting about. They are all just as wonderful. The orange one isn't just chocolate infused with some artificial orangey flavour or even genuine orange oil, it contains tiny pieces of crystallised orange zest, the coffee flavour contains tiny chips of crystallised coffee bean. The Earl Grey flavour sounds awfully odd but is one of the most wonderful chocolate experiences known to man. It's aromatic, it's sweet, and the addition
of the Earl Grey tea adds a strange but delightful, almost peppery twist. The spicy flavours here work as an aftertaste, not hitting your mouth until after the chocolate has melted. They're the chocolate equivalent of spiced, mulled wine I'd say. They-are-lovely.

Dolfin carres (yes, yes, it should be with an accent from Character Map, but I'm too excited at being able to shortly impart that this stuff might be available locally to look for it) are not cheap, at just under £6.00 for a box of 48 little chocolates, weighing in total 216 grammes. That's about double the prices of similar Lindt offerings - it is posh choc after all. Oh, but they're so, so worth six measly pounds and I like the little carres better even than the big bars Dolfin make. They're as thin as an After Eight and about two thirds the size, I suppose, but the chocolate is rich enough to make that tiny, elegant, thin little square into two luscious bites. Even I don't cram one in my mouth in one go (well, not unless it's the first one, and I just can't help that). They're beautifully packaged too ? none of your nasty, shiny, glittery foil ? they're wrapped in thick, opaque, traditional-looking paper in mute shades of creams and browns and they look dinky but jolly posh in their little square box ? the perfect present for a nice person, and just about the best thing you could ever buy for yourself. If you'd like to view the super presentation then hop over to their website, http://www.dolfin.be.

So, to the question by now surely hovering on every reader's lips: where to buy it? And I'm afraid there lies the rub. Dolfin is not easy to buy in the UK. The Panache and Ebene selections, along with several of the big bars (they're for another opinion!) are always available in Selfridge's Food Hall but I don't suppose you're all in London's West End on a regular basis. I've also seen (and bought) the Ebene sel
ection at a bargain price of three boxes for £5.00 at a stall in The Lanes in Brighton but I don't suppose you're there all that often either. The only other chance you have of sourcing this wonderful chocolate is by making a regular check over at www.tesco.com who sell Dolfin on an irregular basis. I check every week, and it's available from my local store in West London from time to time. I've emailed them crossly about this intermittent supply and the swines didn't respond, so I can't help you any further. Like me, you'll just have to search the Tesco site each time you place an order. I've better news for you in the very unlikely event you live in Belgium or Luxembourg as you'll be able to buy Dolfin online from http://www.gourmetstore.be/ and in the slightly less unlikely event you live in the USA or Canada as you can buy it then from http://www.hypergourmet.com/. And really, my only bugbear with Dolfin chocolate is, as you can see, its availibility. It's just not right that a chocolate like this exists and that I can't get my grubby mitts on it on a daily basis. Bah.

Anyway. I could carry on telling you about the wonders of Dolfin chocolate for some time and many, many words more you know, but I won't. I'll simply advise you track it down. It's most certainly worth it.

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