Von Deutschland

I received a long awaiting package in the mail yesterday from far across the sea.  Thanks, Jack!  :)

I tried a couple last night, being very mindful of not overdoing it as this is the first chocolate I’ve had in a month.  The first one was the Alpia Alpenmilch, which is a milk chocolate made by Alpia.  If you know German, have a look at the site, it looks kinda funny.

I tried a small piece last night and then more this morning with breakfast.  It has a very mild chocolate flavor.  If you are used to the Hershey “cow” taste, this is very different from it.  They add whey to the chocolate, which I seem to find in alot of the German chocolates that describe it relating to the Alps.  Seriously.  I’m thinking that its a type of flavor people come to expect or something.  The thing I find funny about this is the color of the packaging.  Very different marketing as opposed to the US, because in the US, almost every chocolate bar is in brown wrapping.  Something pink would be expected to be strawberry flavored.  Curious.  I liked the chocolate.  Yes, it have vanillin but the flavor is not apparent in this bar.

The next one was a Lindt product I had never seen.

It was their Creola bar, which I don’t think they sell in the US since it isn’t on their US website.  The German website is being revised so I couldn’t get details on the product.  Basically its a long narrow bar with milk chocolate on the outside and a white creme inside with cocoa nibs.  Altavista Babelfish just about choked when I asked to the translate “Splinttern aus Edel Cacoabohnen” which I think is “nibs of fine cocoa beans”.  The taste reminds me of a chocolate truffle from an Italian company I had back in Michigan.  We got these as gifts from a vendor and some had this flavor, only those had some type of rice instead of the nibs.  This bar is very addicting.  There is a strange aftertaste in this one but from what I can translate on the wrapper, it uses vanilla extract and not vanillin, although there is a word “aroma” which Babelfish calls “flavour” and that may be vanillin.  Not sure.

So, excellent cool stuff from far away that I would never have seen in my life otherwise.  Thanks again, Jack!

In other chocolate news, Godiva is for sale.  Apparently, Cambell’s Soup who owns them is trying to shed the unhealthy image of candy and focus on MSG and sodium filled soups instead.  Lots of potential buyers out there.  The article points at Wrigley and Hershey.  My money’s on Hershey out of those two, since Hershey has been pushing very hard to grab some of the fine chocolate business.  While Godiva is no Valrhona, it has a certain level of sophistication associated with it (even if it is sold in the mall) that might help Hershey.

I was curious if Cadbury Schweppes was eying Godiva too, although you may have heard they have some other troubles to deal with.  Apparently, they had to recall some chocolate for salmonella contamination.  You might want to check your shelf in case you have one of those bars hiding somewhere.  They had to recall about a million bars and they were fined £1m.  Somebody find out what the conversion to dollars is, but I bet its alot.  I think Cadbury has their soft drink business up for sale right now, maybe they are saving up for Godiva?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 8:27 am and is filed under Chocolate Friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.