For the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of these Turin liqueur-filled chocolates on store shelves around Christmas time. Unlike other liqueur-filled chocolates, these ones go for brand name recognition – they come in the flavors of Bailey’s, Grand Marnier and Kahlua, complete with the logos of those liqueurs on the packages.
I actually think this is a really good product idea, and given the commonness of liqueur-filled chocolates, I’m surprised that we haven’t seen more of this kind of cooperation between beverage and candy companies. Turin seems to be going for maximum market saturation, with their chocolates available at most retailers, in all sizes of containers from little bags of four or five to large boxes and big novelty plastic tubes.
Previously, I’d only ever tried the Bailey’s variety, which I thought was pretty amazing – and apparently everyone else did too, as it’s hard to find them in anything other than a big expensive tin, especially in the post-holiday sale season. So I decided to go with the Kahlua-filled ones for this review.
The bonbons are wrapped in a twist of metallic gold plastic, with a second layer of gold foil wrapped around the chocolate itself – I’m assuming to preserve freshness and cut down on the sticky aftereffects of any filling-related spills.
The chocolates themselves are little milk chocolate domes topped with a Turin logo. They have a mild smell of milk and vanilla, with a little whiff of the liqueur inside. The chocolate is milky and slightly sharp-tasting, and the dark brown, syrupy filling (made from Kahlua, sugar and thickeners) is pretty strong, though not as strong as the boozy Griotte cherry cordials I just reviewed. In the Griotte, the dark chocolate made the liqueur flavor more intense, while here, the milk chocolate helps to mellow it out. They have a very pleasant aftertaste of milky chocolate and mild liqueur.
I haven’t had much Kahlua in the past – just the occasional cocktail that didn’t give me a real indication of its flavor. I was expecting it to taste more coffee-y – what coffee flavor there is seems to blend with the flavor of the chocolate, making it not that noticeable.
In all, I didn’t like these as much as I did the Bailey’s, but if you’re a Kahlua fan, you’ll probably want to check them out before they disappear from store shelves for another year.
Buy Turin Chocolates Online:
- at Amazon.com
My husband loves the Jack Daniels version but I still love the Baileys; the flavour just seems to go better with chocolate.
January 14th, 2009 at 1:50 pmI’m not a big fan of Kahlua, but if they made jose cuervo strawberry margarita chocolates… well, umm… i’m off to do some unrelated shopping that has nothing to do with buying margaritas and dark chocolate ;-)
January 14th, 2009 at 9:38 pmI am attempting to purchase your Turin Kahlua /Baily’s choclates and are unable to find them in any store. I looked them up on Amazon.com but they state that they are currently out of them and don’t know when or if they will be available. Can you please tell me where I can purchase them in the Boston, MA area. Thank You
February 12th, 2009 at 12:10 pmI loved this chocolates and this page always have http://www.dulcemexico.com/mexican_milk_candies.html, i also request it with Tequila 1800 which is a really fine tequila and they send found it for me. I personally like this site. thank you
August 6th, 2009 at 1:53 pm