Rogers Chocolates Icewine Truffle

Canadian winters are impressive. Snow falls in substantial amounts and it stays for a long time – four months where I live – and it can also be damned cold even when the snow isn’t falling. So it makes perfect sense that Canada would be one of the biggest producers of something called icewine.

For the uninitiated, icewine is made by taking grapes that have actually been frozen on the vine; not really a problem in Canada. It freezes all the water in the grapes and helps to create a very, very sweet dessert wine that is a bit of an acquired taste – that’s a good thing because it is also rather expensive. So it makes perfect sense that some Canadian chocolate company would do something with the wealth of icewine made in this frozen wasteland I live in.

Enter Rogers’ Chocolates. I had seen they had been making boxes of truffles using Prospect Winery’s icewine which is also located in BC. The problem was that I hadn’t seen any of them on my side of the continent, but Rogers’ started making the same truffle in bar form and I have a local stockist for their bars so everything worked out just fine in the end.

The bar isn’t huge – just 75g which is Rogers’ standard for their range of Gourmet Bars – and it also has the distinctive Rogers’ look too with their logo and maple leaves. The chocolate is dark in colour, but not particularly dark in taste. It is a meagre 54% cocoa solids, but that actually turns out to be a good thing. Any lower, the sweetness would get overwhelming when combined with the icewine. Any higher and it would likely dominate even above the cognac. So it is a really well balanced bar where the featured ingredient is the star of the show – you get exactly what it says on the label.

The filling is really lovely. There’s an initial burst of sweetness that comes from the wine, but as it fades there’s something waiting to take its place; cognac. The very clever addition of cognac is why this is so delicious – it means the booziness hangs around for a satisfyingly long time.

There really isn’t anything to complain about here at all – this is a tasty bar of chocolate which I would happily eat again. Or rather will happily eat again.

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