I have to admit that there’s something very strange about coming home to three chocolate bars in the mail and realizing that they are review copies, so I’m not allowed to just snarf them down — I have to pay attention, and then write about them.
The bars in this case are all square and all weigh in at 100g (3.5 oz.), and all seem somehow weightier than an equivalent size of American chocolate — I suspect because of the shape and size: they’re all about 3 inches on a side and are actually very nice to hold in the hand (if you can restrain yourself from ripping off the wrapper and stuffing your face).
The Milk Chocolate with Butter Biscuit looks like any other milk chocolate bar: the chocolate is on the outside, revealing itself when the wrapper is opened (and the wrappers are pleasantly easy to deal with) to be a square of squares, like the other bars in this group. The butter biscuit is inside, as one discovers when one feverishly breaks off a square. The chocolate is creamy, a little firmer than most milk chocolates, but literally melts in your mouth — if you give it a chance. The flavor is nicely balanced, a trifle sweet (I confess to being a dark chocolate fan, but more on that later) but not cloying. The chocolate flavor is rich, and although the wrapper notes that there may be traces of nuts, it’s not evident here — it’s all sweet chocolate and cream. The butter biscuit is crisp, not too sweet — the butter flavor really comes through — and makes a delightful contrast with the creamy chocolate. I’m using espresso as a palate cleanser for this session, and the milk chocolate makes a nice foil against the bitterness of the coffee.
The Espresso bar is labeled “Neu” — so new, in fact, that the label is in German, unlike the other bars, with the ingredient list in English on a sticker affixed to the back. (And the wrapper notes that pure Arabica coffee was used.) It’s a milk chocolate, with a strong, rich coffee flavor that stays with you. On examination, it appears that this bar has a core of coffee/chocolate covered in milk chocolate. This one has forced me to change my opinion of chocolate with “flavorings” — I’m enough of a purist that I will settle for chocolate on something, but flavored chocolate is in the same category as flavored coffee — we simply don’t do that in my house, unless you want to throw a tot of brandy or dark rum into your after-dinner espresso. Ritter’s Espresso bar is the best of both worlds, and with the combination of milk chocolate in the shell and coffee/chocolate in the core, it offers surprising complexity. A fine example of how coffee and chocolate were made for each other.
I noted above that I’m a fan of dark chocolate, and Ritter’s Extra Fine Dark Chocolate is just that: it’s just sweet enough to offset some of the bitterness, and no more. It’s also a little softer than most other dark chocolates I’ve run across, and immediately begins to melt and spread a wonderful flavor through your mouth. In spite of the repeated alerts about nuts, what I found in this one is a slightly fruity taste — maybe plums, with a little bit of pear, without the tartness. Of the three bars sampled, the Extra Fine Dark Chocolate displayed the most nuance in flavor — not that I was looking for subtleties: it’s chocolate, after all. But the dark chocolate does have some subtlety to it, grace notes that reinforce the richness of the chocolate without overshadowing the strong cocoa taste (and at 71% cocoa, that’s a good, strong taste).
The slogan on the back of the wrapper reads “Quality. Chocolate. Squared.” I’d say Ritter has earned it.
(All from Ritter GmBh)
