Prestat Organic Dark Chocolate

At £3.60 for an 80g bar, this is probably one of the more expensive bars I’ve purchased recently, but as with the Cocoa Tree Ginger bar which I bought at the same time, I was particularly attracted to the packaging. Yes I know, shame on me.

In this case, the chocolate comes in a bright pink, red and gold box with a design that looks a little like an oriental rug, but Prestat is very, very British. It says so several times on the box.

The chocolate inside is equally pretty. It’s dark, not too shiny and proudly proclaims its name in the middle. Unfortunately, those chunks aren’t very deeply defined, so it’s difficult to snap off a small chunk without taking half the bar… so I guess that means I’ll have to eat half the bar. It’s a hard life.

The box describes it as “intensely dark” and that comes across in both the aroma and the taste. In fact, the chocolate tastes significantly darker than the 63% cocoa solids it claims to be. It’s actually a little too strong for my liking – a little too bitter, but without the range of flavours of better chocolates. I kept waiting for the sweetness or fruitiness to kick in, but it never came. Instead I was just left with that slightly bitter aftertaste that put me off dark chocolate as a child.

This is obviously a well made, quality bar, and the packaging helpfully informs me that Prestat is

“enjoyed by royalty and nobility, stars of the screen and stage and, even, by cardinals, bishops, abbots and nuns for over 100 years”.

– a statement which I find a little bizarre. Quite apart from the fact that they seem to have difficulty constructing a sentence without inserting a comma between every other word, why is this relevant?

Perhaps the next version of the packaging will just have a big sticker saying “As Recommended By God” on the front.

I won’t be buying this again, not because it’s bad chocolate, but because of the “we’re a little bit better than you” attitude that emanates from it. There are plenty of better quality, better value and less pretentious chocolates out there and I recommend spending your money on those.

You might also like...