zChocolat Valentines Day Ruby Box
Valentine’s Day is something you either love or hate, but if you’re going to give a gift, you’ll want it to be something that makes a bit of an impact. A tin of Quality Street or a bar of Dairy Milk just isn’t going to cut it. But an assortment of French chocolates in a beautiful hardwood box might just do the trick.
Presentation really is everything in zChocolat’s world. These chocolates come in an embroidered bag with a little pocket for your personal message. The bag isn’t strictly necessary, but as well as providing a little bit of extra drama, it does help protect Chocolat’s trademark wooden box inside.
We have reviewed one of these zChocolat boxes in the past, and much of what I said then remains true. The chocolates are very nice, if not spectacular, but the fact that I’m still using that box as a money box and it still looks as good as it did two years ago speaks for itself.
The box is divided into two layers. The first layer contains zChocolat’s signature chocolate range; fifteen numbered chocolates. These chocolates – a range of pralines and ganaches form zChocolat’s core range and are made with a mix of Venezuelan and Ivory coast origin chocolate.
The second layer consists of 12 chocolate hearts. There’s a dark chocolate ganache in a white chocolate shell, a milk chocolate hazelnut praline, a dark chocolate with vanilla caramel and a red-painted white chocolate heart with bergamot ganache.
All the chocolates in this collection are well made and tasty. But the thing you really need to know is the price. These 27 chocolates will set you back a cool £103.36. If you’re judging it on the chocolate alone, that’s over £3.80 per chocolate, and for that money you really could find better quality chocolates elsewhere.
But that kind of misses the point. These aren’t chocolates you buy to eat yourself. You buy them to give as a spectacular Valentine’s gift when you want to make a real impression with someone you love. You could almost say that the chocolates themselves are secondary to the packaging; a visually stunning collection and a box they’ll want to keep forever.
In fact, with all the optional extras available (everything from wrapping, engraving and even a concierge service), you could take the cost of this box to well over £180. There’s no doubt it’s a spectacular gift, but overdo it and it might start to look like you have more money than taste.
That said, if you can afford them, zChocolat’s boxes do make a great gift. You’re not getting the best chocolate in the world, but they’re tasty enough and the presentation is truly wonderful.
Information
- Buy it online from:
- Contains dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate.
- Cacao Origin: Ivory Coast, Venezuela
- Filed under assortment, france, valentines, zchocolat.
I do not recommend using them. One word of advice when shipping luxury goods internationally – make sure the vendor has an established partnership with a shipping vendor and is not someone who casually calculates delivery time like zChocolates does. You can take my advice or give your delivery one month variation to get the goods which in case of perishables you might not get the best product, or even worse you might ship a Valentine’s day gift in March.
I ordered chocolates for a family event, paid more than other competitors are charging on the promise my order will be there on time. With one week of time ahead of the event and paying extra for the delivery to get to the destination at the given date, I relied on zChocolates to be able to manage their logistics.
They failed big time and not only have they missed their promissed delivery date by more than two days, they never assumed responsibility for their failure to manage their logistics. Every email I received from them blames everyone but their failure to manage their shipment and estimate their logistics.
To make things worse they don’t mention that customs’ fees are not calculated in their quote when you are charged so your gift recipient has to pay extra money when she receives the gift.
One thing I should have done and I did not is Google the phrase “zChocolat reviews” to see the vendor has dropped the ball before the same way and they have not improved.
P.S. This post has been deleted from this blog twice already. It tells me the blog is not neutral in its reviews and the review is an advertisement. Please share this post if you see it. I typically do not leave negative comments, but it seems like a lot of valentine days will be ruined if people order from zChocolat and the company fails in their service like they did with me.
Dear Ilija,
I am terribly sorry to read about your bad experience with zChocolat!
I clearly remember dealing with your problem back in February: your package got stuck in customs since the country you sent it to has strict customs regulations and procedures. My colleagues and I tried to contact your gift recipients in order to let them know that a package was waiting for them and that they needed to contact DHL. Unfortunately, we never managed to reach your gift recipients by phone.
We would have been more than pleased to refund the customs fee since you had not been informed about this. However, since we could not reach your gift recipients and the occasion had passed, we agreed to have your order refunded and the package was subsequently returned to our offices.
I understand that this was a terrible experience for you, and I would like to extend all my apologies for the distress and prejudice it caused.
Should you wish to give zChocolat a second chance, I would be very happy to make a special gesture on your next order. Simply contact us on zcontact@zchocolat.com and a team member will get back to you as soon as possible.
Warmest regards,
Julia from zChocolat