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MY
CHOCOLATE RECOMMENDATIONS
  
As
always, these are only my preferences and recommendations. I
welcome suggestions, contributions or dissent from others.
Milk
chocolate
British/in
Britain
- Best
standard variety: Sainsbury's
Smooth Milk, Sainsbury's Whole Nut. LIDL and possibly
ALDI sell a very pleasant Coffee-Cream
chocolate in 200gm blocks. That's right! Cadbury's
doesn't get a mention. TESCO's own brand isn't great either.
- Best
luxury variety: Lindt
Excellence Milk, Tesco's Finest Milk. The organic
milk chocolate from Green
and Black
is expensive, but quite nice, with a curious hot-chocolate-like
characteristic.
European
- Standard
varieties: Don't know about basic milk. ALDI in Germany
sells a very pleasant Coffee-Cream
(Kaffee-Sahne)
variety, and also Milk
chocolate and almond (Rahm-Mandel). MATCH in France
has a very nice, if sweet, milk
chocolate with caramelised pecans (Chocolat laix avec noix de
pécans caramélisées). The Swiss supermarket
MIGROS has a wide range of nice blocks of chocolate (Frey),
many of them copies of Lindt,
and nearly as yummy. Some varieties of Côte d'Or
praline-filled bars can be very nice, although I don't like Côte
d'Or
milk chocolate by itself. Milk chocolate Toblerone (Tobler)
is
a beautiful classic.
- Luxury
varieties: Lindt
(Swiss) and Hachez
(German).
Australian
- Standard
varieties: Cadbury's
wins. (Australian Cadbury
's
also tastes much more pleasant than British Cadbury's.)
Plain/dark
chocolate
British/in
Britain
- Best
standard variety: Cadbury's
Bournville.
- Best
luxury variety: Lindt
Excellence 70%.
The organic Maya
Gold
chocolate from Green
and Black
is expensive, but rich and beautifully fragrant (orange and spice).
Not as dark as the Lindt,
but the balance of flavours and sweetness is very pleasant. Also,
Sainsbury's
Taste the Difference
Belgian
Dark Chocolate with Ginger
is wonderful! It contains ginger oil, which is hot and intense.
European
- Standard
varieties: Don't know about basic dark. Nestlé
in France has a sweet but nice dark chocolate with almond
variety
(Noir Amandes Croquantes).
Côte
d'Or
dark chocolate is nice in small doses.
- Luxury
varieties: Lindt,
Nestlé
(both now sell bean-type varieties in France: Nestlé
Sumatera,
Gagnoa, Barlovento;
Lindt
Ecuador,
Madagascar, Ghana;
but note that they don't just vary the bean, but also the other
ingredients!). Hachez
in Germany do a delightful coffee variety Edel-Mokka Sahne.
And
then there's Café Tasse... a fantabulicious selection
of chocolate blocks from Belgium. Dark chocolate with
cinnamon or chips of cocoa bean, mmmmmm. And a number of other
varieties. And then there's Valrhona... lovely, pitch-black varieties
(graded), but ludicrously expensive.
Australian
- Standard
varieties: Cadbury's
Old Gold.
- Luxury
varieties: Haigh's
(shops in Melbourne and Adelaide).
Boxed
and fancy chocolates
(pralines, etc)
British
- Best
standard variety: You might not believe it, but Cadbury's
Black
Magic
is actually pretty good for the price and variety. Contains a
lot of fruit-fondant centres, good and tangy, but if that's not
your cup of tea, then steer clear! And of course this is a dark
chocolate box... When it comes to milk chocolate boxes, things
are awful. Cadbury's
Milk
Tray
is an abomination. And Terry's
boxes aren't great.
- Best
luxury variety: no
opinion yet (Certainly NOT Thornton's!)
European
- If
you're slumming it in Germany, then the boxes from Sarotti
(Kleine
Schlemmerei, Auslese,...)
really are very nice - fresh flavours, fresh nut and truffle
flavours (and only DM7 for 200g). More expensive brands such
as Feodora
and Gubor
aren't worth paying twice the price for. In Scandinavia, Marabou,
the ubiquitous chocolate producer, produces acceptable boxes,
which sort of compensate for the horrible blocks of chocolate
they make!
- For
better quality, or at least nicer aesthetics, Lindt
is good, with a wide range of boxes. The milk chocolate has a
notable caramel touch, which not everyone might like. The chocolates
are characterised by fresh nuts, and good praline centres, although
there's a certain sameness to these. The Connaisseurs
boxes offer more imaginative pralines (eg, almond with lemon)
than the far-too-common Swiss
Tradition/Selection
boxes.
- A
really really nice (and stylish) selection of chocolates from
Germany is Hachez's
Auslese feinster Pralinés. Lovely. The
nuts are almost too crunchy! The flavoured marzipans are classy.
And the liqueur cherry (a peasant in so many chocolate boxes)
is wonderfully boozy.
- Speaking
of liqueurs... liqueur- and spirit-filled chocolates are a difficult
class. Anthon
Berg
(from Denmark, but widely available, and especially at airports)
make dark chocolate "bottles" filled with pleasant
syrups of many liqueurs and spirits. Lindt's
blocks are also ok. I have heard that Neuhaus
do a very good collection of liqueur-filled chocolates.
Australian
- Hmmm,
tough. Red
Tulip
actually does nice boxed selections. Suprisingly nice. Thankfully,
the American Whitmans
brand is being withdrawn from Australia... and not before time.
That was truly the triumph of marketing over sense!
- Lindt
boxes are readily available, but so, occasionally, are the Sarotti
boxes discussed above.
- For
more money (A$75/kg), there's Haigh's,
but they're a bit heavy on (very nice!) fondant centres and dark
chocolate. Their praline centres are mediocre, and the milk chocolate
isn't as good as the dark:-(
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