| Product: |
Green & Black's Organic 70% Dark Chocolate |
| Date: |
26.01.08 (187 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Lovely smooth texture, nice basic dark chocolate, not terribly fattening
Disadvantages: Waxy, slighly dry, with some other not really great undetones and aftertastes
Green & Black's is probably considered to be one of the finest mass-market British chocolate makers today. Their insistence on producing both organic and fair trade products is well known. Of course, while all this all well and good, the question is, are their chocolates any good?
I personally believe that the "proof of the pudding" when it comes to any chocolate maker can be found in their dark chocolate products. Since I have tried many different Green & Black's products in the past, I thought you should know what I think of their most basic dark chocolate - their 70% Organic.
When you first open this bar, you'll find that the scent here, while obviously predominantly of the cocoa, has a slightly metallic tinge to it. This could be partially due to the gold foil in the inner wrapper, but I found this to be an unfortunate opening to this product. After one gets past that, you can also detect a very pleasant vanilla smell underneath.
When you break a piece of this bar off you'll immediately find that this bar has a very crisp texture to it, which results in a sharp snapping sound when broken. You may also notice that the bar feels quite dry to your fingers. What this means to me is that the cocoa butter content in this bar is on the low side. This can be considered a good thing, especially if you're dieting and want just a small square as a treat, since you'll get less than 2gr of fat in each square (and depending on the size of your bar, only 16 to 18 calories in each square). This also means it will be less susceptible to "bloom" (which is when changing storage temperatures causes the fats to give the chocolate a white coating).
On the other hand, a dryer bar also melts less easily in your mouth, and this isn't such a good thing. When you first try some of this chocolate, you will find that you really need to chew it. If you can resist that temptation and let it sit on your tongue, you'll find that it will stay in your mouth for quite a very long time. With this, you'll find that in addition to the obvious chocolate flavour, you'll sense a touch of a coffee undertone here. As that flavour opens up in your mouth, you might also detect the vanilla in your nose as you breathe in. This is a nice touch, but the vanilla in your mouth won't actually match the vanilla you are smelling, since the taste is slightly on the sour side - much like if you had put a drop of vanilla extract on your tongue. The smell is lovely but the taste isn't equally as pleasant, and has a sharpness you'll taste at the back of your mouth, which reminds me of a strong alcoholic beverage like whisky (but without the kick).
As the chocolate dissolves, you will feel that this chocolate is very smooth in texture. There's no grittiness or graininess here at all, which means that the chocolate mass and the sugar have been perfectly blended together. Unfortunately, this also makes for a waxy texture, as if they had covered the bar in a thin film of drippings from a melted candle. On the other hand, you also won't feel this coats your tongue or teeth at all after you've swallowed. This would have been an attribute of a higher cocoa butter content which this bar doesn't have. While this leaves your mouth feeling clean after you've eaten it, this also leaves an aftertaste which is dry, and papery, almost like dust.
In conclusion, Green & Black's 70% Organic Dark chocolate is a basic bar that also has a very basic taste to it. The chocolate has a slight coffee undertone with a vanilla aftertaste, but no other more complex flavours come through to make this a more interesting eating experience. While the bar is beautifully smooth in your mouth, it is also on the dry side, with a waxy coating that doesn't enhance the feeling on your tongue, and won't stay with you long after you've swallowed. All told, I can't really say that this is anything spectacular, but rather just plain okay. I'll still recommend it since the company has high standards, but this bar only deserves three stars from me when it comes to taste.
Thanks for reading!
Davida Chazan © January 2008
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Technical Stuff:
This is my FINAL attempt to write a food review which focuses as much as possible on the smell, taste and eating experience, and with as little else as possible. This is how I prefer to write such reviews, and would prefer to read food & drink reviews that do the same.
However, I realize that most people want packaging, nutrition and other such garbage in their food reviews - even if it means we get to hear what they were doing the last time they ate this, which gives us extensive superfluous information like the condition of their garden flowers, what was on TV, or if their couch was comfortable. Go figure!
And for those who must know: According to http://www.greenandblacks.com/uk/index.php?flash=y es this bar contains: Organic Cocoa Mass, Organic Raw Cane Sugar, Organic Cocoa Butter, Emulsifier: Soya Lecithin, Organic Vanilla Extract.
The official webpage for this can be found at http://www.greenandblacks.com/UK/productdetails.ph p?pageid=27&cid=6&pid=8
You can buy 100gr bars of these online through this website at a rate of 4 bars for £8, for 8 bars for £16 or 12 bars for £24.
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Summary: The classic 70% Dark chocolate bar from Green & Black's
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