Chocolate & Love Crushed Diamonds

This is one of the Chocolate & Love own branded bars that I picked up at their recent tasting session in central London.

It’s one of those strange chocolates that can’t decide if it wants to be dark or milk. It’s a 55% cocoa solids bar and describes itself as “organic dark truffle chocolate” which isn’t a term I’ve heard before. A quick glance at the ingredients shows it contains milk fat.

The ingredients list is also a little odd in that it lists the brand names of the two kinds of cane sugar used (“SYRAMENA” and “SUCNAT”). I’m not convinced this is necessary, and the fact that the brand names sound entirely unappetising doesn’t help much either. A quick Google search reveals they are made by a company with an equally unappetising sounding name – “Pronatec” – who specialise in producing organic and fair trade products.

The Pronotec web site also happens to list a range of chocolates under the name Amarrú, including what looks like this exact same bar in differently branded packaging. Make of that what you will.

As you can see, it’s a nice looking bar though. It’s well made and has a good colour to it.

And the taste is quite pleasant too. It’s quite sweet and creamy – thanks to that low cocoa percentage and added milk fat – but that means it’s should appeal to a wider audience.

The “crushed diamonds” are actually small pieces of cocoa nibs scattered throughout the chocolate. They give the chocolate a nice texture, and initially at least, add a little richness to the bar.

But as the chocolate melts and you’re left with pieces of nib in your mouth, they quickly become very bitter and have an almost chemical flavour to them. Being organic, I doubt there are actually any chemicals involved, but that’s how they taste. I usually like the rich, bitterness of cocoa nibs, but I didn’t find this pleasant at all.

So while I like the initial flavour and crunch, this chocolate very quickly goes downhill. It’s not something I could recommend.

It seems a little odd to me that Chocolate & Love say that they want to feature the best of the best in their online shop, yet their own brand doesn’t quite make the grade. Perhaps they should concentrate on getting the best chocolates into the shop, because I don’t think this does much to help their brand.

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