About a month ago I attended Grocery Showcase West with Sean – he received an invite to attend and he brought me along for kicks. Having spent years and years (and years) in retail, I knew exactly what to expect but Sean had never been to an industry show before. It made for an interesting afternoon.
Basically, GSW is where big grocery brands introduce their latest products to hit the marketplace, or that will be hitting the marketplace, in the coming months – mostly to retail buyers and the media. You get a sneak peek (and taste) at what’s coming down the pipe.
And that’s how I snagged two new bars of Green & Black’s Organic Chocolate: the milk chocolate sea salt and the dark chocolate burnt toffee. Green & Black’s are known for being organic and fair trade chocolate and they bare the mark of the Organic Soil Association.
Green & Black’s Dark Chocolate Burnt Toffee
This latest dark chocolate offering comes in at 60% cocoa and features “sweet Yorkshire Toffee pieces combined with our smooth dark chocolate with fruity notes to create an irresistible sweet-bitter taste with a textured crunch.”
Well after tasting it, I couldn’t argue with the description at all – it’s exactly what they say it will be. And honestly, I fully expected to like this a lot more than I actually did. It tasted quite bitter – like it had a much higher cocoa content. and the chunks of toffee are quite large but they definitely had a burnt aftertaste to them. And, as I often find with Green & Black’s, there was a definite citrus flavour to the chocolate.
I tend to eat chocolate by letting it melt on my tongue (unless I freeze it – then I munch away on it). So that meant with this bar I had the bitter chocolate melting on my tongue and was left with a mouthful of burnt tasting toffee chunks. I wasn’t getting the sweet/bitter combo all at once. So I tried chewing some and that improved it a bit but I still found it too bitter and burnt tasting.
This is one I don’t think I’ll be purchasing for a repeat tasting.
Green & Black’s Milk Chocolate Sea Salt
I realized when I tried this bar that I don’t think I’ve ever had a milk chocolate bar from Green & Black’s so I was curious to give it a taste. Plus, I adore salty chocolate. The package describes it as “delicate flakes of Anglesey Sea Salt, with their natural texture, complement the creaminess of our milk chocolate, accentuating it’s caramel notes.”
Now that’s my kinda chocolate bar. Time to see if it lived up to the description.
It did. It left a warm taste on the tongue and the salt and chocolate melted together at a similar rate making for a creamy, chocolatey flavour with a tang of saltiness that turns into a little salty burst at the end. And the citrus-y flavour of most G&B chocolate wasn’t as pronounced as it is in their dark bars.
I give this one a two thumbs up and would definitely plunk down my $4 (for a 100g bar) again.
One thing that was interesting – Green & Black’s is a UK brand and the two bars I was given to try were UK samples and not in their Canadian packaging yet ( so, no French and UK nutrition information was present). After seeing the documentary, Fed Up, last week and finding out that sugar NEVER has it’s percentage of daily intake recommendation listed in nutrition info, it was interesting to see that the UK does list it. With a 90g recommended daily sugar allowance listed on the package for a typical adult, the bar 45.5 grams. Half the daily recommended amount. Interesting. I’d love to see this appear on N. American packaging!
The toffee one would appeal to my taste either but I’m loving the sound of the milk chocolate sea salt bar (also loving your cute little notes in the photos)
It is interesting that the UK packaging includes the daily recommended amount of sugar and even more interesting that their bar packs in 50% of it!