Cola-flavored candy ranks pretty high in my top 5 favorite types of candy. Wonka Bottlecaps, Haribo Happy-Cola Gummi Candy, and Soda Pop Shoppe Jelly Belly jelly beans have been perpetual favorites. But… change is a comin’ around here and there’s a new kid in town. He’s shiny, long-lasting, delicious and named Cola Ball. Sweets4MySweetie, a retro and European candy shop in Canada, is chock full of ‘em.

These fellows are fantastic! They’re round, silver balls that, yep, you guessed it, taste like cola. And, as if a long-lasting cola flavor wasn’t enough, as a bonus, they also look like ammunition. While I now enjoy this particular trait of cola balls, I was less than thrilled at first. Imagine my surprise when I opened a box of what I assumed was candy and found a nondescript baggie of large BBs!

I was thinking, uh-oh, did I write an unfavorable review of someone’s candy and this is a warning? Have I angered anyone lately? Does someone in my home have a weapon that they haven’t mentioned? As it happened, it was just that time of the year when A Christmas Story was about to be aired on every channel. Thinking about my Christmas wishlist reminded me of Ralphie and his coveted BB gun. So, I breathed a sigh of relief when I read the business card at the bottom of the box and learned that they were just silver, non-nefarious jawbreakers!

These aren’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill jawbreakers, though. They are delightful, shiny jawbreakers – everyone knows shiny makes everything exponentially more appealing! If you run across them, I highly recommend grabbing some. Just make sure you have enough to share because you will end up sharing them! And, if cola isn’t your thing, I’m sure they could be repurposed in any number of ways. Perhaps, impromptu marbles, decorations on a birthday cake at the local NRA meetup, as parakeet toys, or of course, ammo for a slingshot, etc. For these reasons and their tastiness, I give them 5 Bonbons!

• Big list of cola candy
• Sweets4MySweetie website

Candy Addict received this product as a sample from the manufacturer. No payment was received for this review and all opinions represent an unbiased view of the product.

I love everything about Ritter Sport chocolate. I love that it’s a family-owned business since 1912. I love the cheerful colors of the wrappings. I love the squareness of the bars. I love that there are so many unique flavors – Butter Biscuit, Yogurt, Milk Chocolate with Strawberry Creme – and regular Dark and Milk chocolate, too. Most of all, I seriously love the taste of this chocolate. It’s all incredibly good! I’m talking, “I want to try every variety ever made and will hunt for them across the globe”, obsessively good.

Now I know what I was missing when I walked right by those funny-named, uniquely-squared, chocolate bars. I think the name Ritter Sport threw me off; what did “sport” have to do with chocolate? Well, back in 1932, Mrs Ritter conjured up the idea that their chocolate bars should fit perfectly in a sport jacket, be the same weight as rectangular chocolate bars, and not break. Voila – the square Ritter Sport bar! The coolest and unexpected thing about these bars is the Snap Open Pack – totally unlike anything else I’ve ever seen in a chocolate bar.

The quality of this chocolate blew my mind! Every flavor was fantastic! I don’t even like hazelnuts, but I actually happily ate some of the Whole Hazelnut Milk and Dark Chocolate bars. Even the nuts were perfect – whole, fresh, and plentiful. Ridiculously good. Dangerously good. WOW! My favorites are the Milk Chocolate with Strawberry Creme (to die for), Milk Chocolate with Butter Biscuit (a butter cookie hidden in chocolate? Brilliant!), and the super smooth Alpine Milk Chocolate (this stuff’s going on my special occasion list for eternity).

For a limited time, you can enter for a chance to get some free chocolate, too! Send a Halloween e-card to trick your friends and possibly win a treat from Ritter Sport! Each day from October 18 to November 6, 2010 a box of Ritter Sport Minis will be raffled off. Get entered in to win! The e-card are pretty cool, too! If you don’t win, I’m telling you… you REALLY want to try Ritter Sport! There’s a flavor for everyone!

• Ritter Sport US
• Trick your Friends – enter a raffle to win!

Candy Addict received this product as a sample from the manufacturer. No payment was received for this review and all opinions represent an unbiased view of the product.

Let’s say you return home from the market with a big Yukon Gold potato to go with your steak. You’re ready to bake the potato when you notice some fine print on a small sticker. It reads: “Contains salt, milk substitutes, artificial sour cream, onion, bacon and cheddar cheese flavor; 7% real potato.” Although you might like the sound of those add-ons, you certainly wouldn’t think you were holding a potato in your hand, would you? Of course not. A potato is 100% potato. Those other things might go great on your spud, but you want to start with an actual potato, don’t you? Of course.

And yet, this potato scenario exactly mirrors what happens when you buy any mass produced chocolate bar. All of them have around 7% cocoa and cocoa butter, and fill in the other 93% with sugar, milk substitutes, vegetable oils, soy lecithin and fake vanilla (called “vanillan”). Yes, you read correctly. Ninety percent or more of your supposed chocolate bar has nothing to do with chocolate, and yet it’s called chocolate!

Why is that, you ask? You won’t be surprised to learn that it’s due to history, greed and a disregard for quality. The cocoa in a nominal chocolate bar is by far the costliest ingredient, so makers want as little of it as possible. And we’ve called this food chocolate for so long that we associate the name with something very far from the cocoa bean.

Enter good chocolate, which has only been around since 1987, when chocolatiers figured out a way to bring out the distinct flavors of the cocoa bean in high percentage formulas without the high acidity and bitterness overwhelming the taste. (Why you don’t want any more than 70-75% cocoa; sugar, cocoa butter and vanilla round out the cocoa bean flavor best.) These artisan chocolates have a concern for quality and flavor. You’ve seen all those dark chocolate bars with percentages on the front, right? That comes from wishing to trumpet the fact that these bars have more cocoa credibility, and it’s a great trend. Except for one thing.

There’s more to a good chocolate bar then cocoa percentage. Most crucial is the bean you use. To cut to the chase, inferior chocolate uses inferior beans (“Forastero”) because they’re easiest and cheapest to grow. This lousy bean accounts for well over 90% of all cocoa grown, and its bought by all the mass producers. And the good stuff? “Criollo” and “Trinitario.”

Like fine wine, these beans have distinct, complex flavors that reflect the soil and climate of where they’re grown. Artisan chocolate of amazing flavor is exclusively made from these beans. (Mass produced, high percentage cocoa bars like Lindt Dark Chocolate contain Forastero beans, so they taste nowhere as good as the chocolate I’m talking about now. Hence, a merely high percentage of cocoa does not guarantee anything in the flavor department.)

El Rey chocolates use only Venezuelan Criolo and Trinitario beans. Let’s taste three of their bars from a very attractive metal tin of 5g squares.

The El Rey Cariaco Dark Chocolate “Rio Caribe” bar is 60.5% cocoa, a single bean (that is, unblended) cocoa variety of Venezuelan origin. It’s a Trinitario bean from the famed north eastern growing region of the country.

It has a great snap and earthy flavor, mildly fruity, but a bit too much vanilla flavor for my taste. If you’re new to real chocolate, however, this bar is a really good one to try because all of us normally associate vanilla with chocolate, so this makes for a good transition. This bar also has a well-rounded flavor with a few high distinct notes.

The 70% version of this El Rey bar shows more clearly why beans matter. Now that there’s less sugar and vanilla, I can taste the nice flavor of this delicious chocolate. The earthiness has some subtle peat or chalkiness to it, and the dark berry notes are more prominent. Wow, this is good. With this bar you really begin to taste chocolate as the complex plant that it is.

And now, the El Rey “Apamate” 73.5% Dark Chocolate bar. Made from the Carenero variety of Trinitario beans, this chocolate is amazing. Although I wouldn’t recommend that you go from Hershey’s to this chocolate (just like you can’t go from diet Coke to well-rounded Bordeaux and compare them very well), it’s great to start tasting real chocolate so you can see what’s going on with this bar.

First, it has a strong rich chocolate flavor that’s earthy and deep. Second, and unlike the Rio Caribe, this bar presents a more harmonious combination of flavors, including berry and an almost spicy taste. There’s also a hint of nuttiness and, most impressively, a long sustaining flavor of them all together that lingers on the tongue well after the chocolate is gone. This chocolate has its own personality. You may like artisan bars with a different character, but that’s what’s great about real chocolate: there are genuine differences to notice and enjoy.

So, all three of these El Rey chocolates have great mouth feel and rich, distinct flavors. These are great chocolates, made to the high standards that great cocoa beans deserve and reward. Although I prefer Amano single-bean chocolate (which I hope to review here in future), El Rey has a real winner here, especially with the Apamate. This Venezuelan company knows what it’s doing.

It’s been twenty minutes since I had a piece of Apamate and I can still feel its presence on my palate. Wow. Go buy this excellent chocolate if you already know about real chocolate. If you don’t, try these three bars in order and enjoy a journey of taste discovery.

You might even want to start with the Caoba 41% Dark Milk chocolate bar (delicious!) and work your way up the flavor ladder. All of these bars and an excellent white chocolate can be had in a great sampler. I highly recommend this gift for you and anyone else you like. Now that’s a present worth unwrapping.

And hey, take that 7% potato back to the store for a real one.

• El Rey Chocolates Website

Candy Addict received this product as a sample from the manufacturer. No payment was received for this review and all opinions represent an unbiased view of the product.

Chocri is a German company that plans to open for business in the US in the new year. Their website allows you to design your own chocolate bars – white, dark, or milk, with your choice of additions, which range from the normal (nuts, fruit) to the more exotic (gold balls, gummy bears, spices).

When they asked if I’d like to order some sample bars to review, I was all “heck yeah,” but as I delved into the site, I began to realize that I am not exactly the ideal customer for this sort of thing. Because A, I have very strong opinions about what flavors go together, and B, I am overwhelmed by too many choices.

So, on the one hand the only things I would be sure I would like were the totally traditional choices like milk chocolate with crispy rice. On the other hand I knew that was totally not in the spirit of the thing. What would be the point of getting a combination that I could get anywhere?

Beyond that, I no longer remember exactly what went on in my mind as I clicked around the options on their site – so many that they claim that more than ten billion combinations are possible. So when the following bars arrived, I thought some crazy person had ordered them:

• White with red rice and mango cubes
• Milk with coconut shavings, candied rose petals and a marzipan rose
• Dark with pecans, sour cherries and orange pepper

Well, on the bright side, they sure aren’t anything you could walk into a store and buy, right?

The first thing I noticed about these bars is that they are larger than they looked to me on the website, and so this also meant that some of the toppings were surprising. Red rice is not small rice crispy things, for example – they’re rice crackers.

Another thing is that the toppings are really on top, not mixed in. (I guess this means if you really didn’t like something, you could pick it off the top. But this would also totally not be in the spirit of the thing.) They are also distributed beautifully but not necessarily evenly throughout the bar. You get big pieces of pecan decorating the top, not little pieces chopped up and thoroughly mixed in.

Now for a little rant: In America, companies that specialize in this sort of thing tend to let the quality of the underlying product slide, figuring it will get lost in the mass of toppings anyway. I’m thinking for example of certain places that specialize in letting you mix toppings into pretty lousy ice cream; pizza tends to be another good example of this.

I was hoping I could expect better of the Germans. I am really not interested in eating a lot of fancy nonsense mixed into mediocre chocolate. Happily, that is not what they are selling.

The white chocolate is particularly excellent, with a great creamy texture and no cheap off-flavors. If you think you don’t like white chocolate, please make sure that you’ve had some that’s as good as this before you give up on it.

As for the toppings I put in this one… the red rice crackers, OK they look cool, but are not really what I want in chocolate. That’s not their fault, it was my choice. The mango chunks are very small, dried and candied tasting. They are fine, and the combination is fine. I have to say though that what I like about this is the bites that happen to have no topping and are just really good white chocolate. Which is, yes, not in the spirit of the thing. So sue me.

The dark chocolate is also good. It’s just a hair sweeter than I like, but the texture is great – I prefer it not too hard and snappy. The pecans and dried cherries are good, and fortunately this one is not a totally insane combination. The orange pepper doesn’t make much of an impression on me one way or another, but that’s fine.

The milk chocolate is my least favorite, but I am very hard to please when it comes to milk chocolate. It has to be much darker than normal, which this isn’t. Candied rose petals add even more sweetness, which this doesn’t need. I’d love to try those with dark chocolate, though.

The marzipan rose is lovely, as are many of the other decorations they offer – these are going to make an interesting gift-giving option for the chocolate lover.

To sum up, despite the fact that they were ordered by a crazy person, I am kind of sorry I mentioned to some other people that I would share these samples with them, especially the white chocolate. I think I may have to temporarily lose track of where I put that one.

• Chocri Website (German)

Taza to Go is a ready-to-drink chocolate extravagance from Valor, the renowned Spanish chocolatier founded in 1881. The name comes from getting chocolate “a la taza” in Spain, which means in a small white ceramic cup. It’s an amazing, thick, rich dark chocolate drink served hot. I would call it hot chocolate, but that’s like calling the Casa Milà in Barcelona an apartment. It’s only hot chocolate in the sense that it’s chocolate, which is hot. It’s more like a melted dark chocolate bar with just enough milk added to make it into a thick, drinkable liquid. It’s especially popular at breakfast, but also as a dessert treat.

Okay, great, but what will it taste like when it comes, not from a freshly melted chocolate bar and milk from your master chocolate barista, but from a premixed, imported pouch? Extremely delicious, if properly prepared.

As I sit down with my third cup of Taza to Go, I’m struck by how making this the right way really pays dividends. Let me explain.

When you first open the pouch and pour this dark goodness out, it looks more or less like pudding. Of course I took a spoonful. It was good, but not crazy good. The chocolate side of it was fine, but the reconstituted milk was a little weird. Since it was so thick, I then decided that I should add enough milk to make it like regular hot chocolate. I did that. It was very good hot chocolate, but something was still a little off.

So, finally, I took the pouch directions seriously and simply heated up the thick pudding. Specifically, I put three tablespoons in a small-ish coffee mug (Ikea 365+, you know the one) and heated it for 25 seconds. Removing the mug, I saw that the chocolate had risen about 3/4 of the way up, so 35 seconds probably would have made a molten lava mess. Twenty-five seconds (1000 watt oven) was perfect. The heat had liquefied the Taza to Go, and I gave it a stir.

Time for a sip of this premier drinking chocolate, as it’s intended to be enjoyed. Wow. Now we’re talking. And sipping. Then slurping, then licking of mug. Then making of another mug. This is a wonderful treat. It’s a very strong chocolate flavor, but smooth and with several flavor notes to keep things interesting. There’s also a tinge of cinnamon. You can really taste the quality of Valor chocolate in this Taza to Go super drink.

So, you may not be used to drinking hot chocolate like this – very thick, and very rich. But once you try it, it’s good times all around. It’s like the bottom of the mug in normal hot chocolate where the chocolate has settled. Except this is nothing but thick and rich, and it’s got just an exceptional chocolate taste – not that junky flavor you get from low cacao content, cheap fillers, or corn syrup.

Although a bit pricey ($12 for 900 ML/30.43 oz), this big pouch makes many delicious, concentrated servings. I highly recommend this fantastic chocolate drink, especially as fall leaves begin to fly.

Candy Addict received this product as a sample from the manufacturer. No payment was received for this review and all opinions represent an unbiased view of the product.

• Valor Website

You’ll see Swiss conglomerate Nestle’s Milkybars in England just about everywhere. In the U.S., they’re much harder to find – even the Nestle USA website doesn’t list them anywhere. So when I saw one in World Market the other day, I snagged it. Even though I’m not a huge white chocolate fan, I’m curious to try this candy that’s so popular across the pond.

In keeping with recent trends to make foods with fewer suspect ingredients, Nestle makes a big fuss about the “all natural ingredients” in this candy, even explaining the ingredients in little parenthetical remarks. “Whole cow’s milk (that’s been dried).” Okay… thanks. Skeptics will reply that “milk” and “sugar” don’t reveal the whole story, since cows injected with antibiotics or sugar cane plants sprayed with pesticides lead to measurably unnatural byproducts (this is why organic foods can be safer and better tasting), but at least the artificial flavorings and colors are absent from the Milkybar, right?

Yeah, fine, but how about the taste?

This variety of milkybar is called “chunky,” but its little squares are pretty small to average for a segmented candy bar with such a moniker. (Maybe I’m still recovering from experiencing the Giant Bite Gummy Bear.) Anyway, they do break off nicely for a small bite to throw in your mouth.

And now I realize why these bars sell like socks in Iceland – the Milkybar is darn tasty. It’s got a very creamy texture and mouth feel, for starters. Secondly, the milk flavor is fresh and prominent. And third, it’s like eating the candy bar version of Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk. Yummy!

So, yes, the Milkybar is very sweet, but sometimes you want that sugar bomb experience, right? And if you’ve ever dipped a spoon into sweetened condensed milk and licked away, dreaming of a candy bar that could capture that unique kind of milky goodness, this bar comes pretty close. It may not have the very slight hint of being cooked to almost the caramel stage as Eagle Brand seems to, but it’s got a nice halo of genuine vanilla that really works for me.

Even if you don’t usually like white chocolate, I recommend you give the Milkybar a try. If you can take the sweetness level, the creamy reward is substantial.

• Nestle Milkybar UK Website

As I’ve said before, I can’t resist an animal-shaped candy. And when I saw these Jelly Rats in Ikea, I figured that even if these weren’t good to eat, they would be a good joke for my reptile-keeper friends. After all, why should the animals be the only ones who get to eat rats?

But after my recent surprising positive experience with the Trader Joe’s Gummy Tummy Penguin, I was more open-minded to the possibility that these might actually be good to eat. So I tried them myself.

There seem to be four flavors, of the yellow, light-green, orange and red varieties. They are fruit flavors, in a vague way. I found the red kind of nasty and the orange dull, when orange is usually my favorite fake-fruit flavor. The other two are innocuous.

The texture is pretty soft, only a little chew to it. And they’re only vague rat-shaped. Basically these are tolerable, but they’re no gummy tummy penguins.

I was also intrigued by Godis Gula Snören because, well, they are called Godis Gula Snören. I guess this is real Swedish, you couldn’t make this stuff up, right? Also, toffee flavor laces seemed exotic, if not necessarily a good idea. But I was willing to give it a try.

I have to admit that I have not eaten candy laces in, hmm, decades? And they were never one of my favorite things even as a child. I even had to ask my assistant whether it was normal that these are hollow in the middle. He assures me that this is how candy laces are. Well, now, isn’t that cool – so long and skinny and yet hollow in the middle! If you run into someone who’s just arrived, like, from Mars, and would find this as surprising as I do, tell them they should definitely check this out.

As for the taste – yeah, like toffee. Vaguely butterscotchy, although definitely artificial – there’s no real butter or anything in them. I mean, you’re not expecting miracles with something like this. The texture is fine, a little chewy, not at all gummy. Now I see that maybe I would have liked candy laces as a child if they hadn’t come in such horrible flavors.

I would not buy these again, because I can think of better ways to consume butterscotch flavor, but they are cheap and worth a try. And, like in the photo, they look exactly like spaghetti. There has to be some cake-decorating or craft application that this would be useful for. If you can figure out a reason to decorate a cake with a plate of spaghetti, you should definitely go get some of these, and even more definitely, send us a picture.

• Ikea Website

Back when I was doing the Great Chocolate Experiments, I tried a few unusual combinations of chocolate and fruits like sun-dried tomato and dried mango. But chocolate and kiwi is a new one on me, so I was intrigued when I received this Whittaker’s Kiwi Fruit chocolate bar from a friend (the same friend who was my Research Assistant for the Great Chocolate Experiments, if anyone’s keeping score). My friend’s brother left her with a few too many edible souvenirs from his trip to New Zealand, so I was happy to take this one off her hands – for the good of this website, of course.

Described on the package as “A New Zealand Favourite,” this paperback-sized block of milk chocolate (a whole 250 grams, or around half a pound) is divided into tiny bite-sized squares. Break one off, and you’ll find it’s studded with little green chunks. Dried kiwi? Not according to the ingredients, which contain only kiwi fruit and apple purees, making it more likely that the green bits are a jelly formed from dried fruit puree – fruit leather, in other words. (Chocolate-covered fruit leather – why didn’t I think of that?)

The milk chocolate is nice – not overly sweet or milky. The kiwi bits are quite sour, even if they do remind me more of a sour apple flavor than kiwi, and their tartness cuts through the sweetness of the milk chocolate, keeping it from being cloying. The chocolate also cuts down in the acidity and sourness of the kiwi pieces, making this an excellent pairing, though I can see that the combination of acid and chocolate might not be everybody’s thing.

So if you ever get a chance to visit the land of Hobbits, tropical fruit and fuzzy flightless birds, why not give this bar a try? This New Zealand favorite might just wind up as one of yours as well. (At the very least, it will make an interesting souvenir for your siblings to foist off on their friends.)

• Whittaker’s Website

One of the things I always find interesting when traveling in the United States is the prevalence of Hispanic culture compared to in Canada – I guess Mexican immigrants who make it over the border into the United States are usually content to stop there rather than venturing further north.

In my limited experience, it seems to me that the “ethnic” section of American grocery stores always has a wide selection of Mexican foods, while where I live, you’re more likely to find Vietnamese rice noodles or Thai and Indian curry pastes there, with Mexican foods relegated to a small (and totally inauthentic) selection of taco seasoning mixes, burrito shells and salsas. Needless to say, in this city, Mexican candy is pretty much nonexistent.

I have to admit, I haven’t been terribly broken up about this fact – Mexican candy’s widespread use of chili, tamarind and salt (all fine ingredients – just not necessarily in a candy setting), its distressing tendency to get contaminated with lead, and a generally negative impression from the Internet food scene, have ensured that I haven’t had much desire to add Mexican treats to my candy repertoire.

Since Mexican candy is so far off my radar, I was quite surprised by the number of Mexican candy companies at the All Candy Expo – though I probably shouldn’t have been, since Spanish is practically a second official language in the Expo’s home city of Chicago. In addition to the expected assortment of chili, lime and salt-dusted items, I managed to pick up two different brands of a candy I’d never seen before – mazapan.

Both brands, de la Rosa and Mi Mazapan, were practically identical, each a flat, beige disc, about 1/4 inch thick, with ingredients that consisted of just peanuts, sugar and artificial flavor. With its lack of hot, sour and spicy ingredients, it was already defying my negative stereotypes about Mexican candy. Only – what was it?

A quick Googling informed me that there’s a reason “mazapan” sounds like “marzipan” – it’s basically the peanut version of the favorite European almond paste. I’ve never met a peanut butter candy I didn’t like, so I decided to dig in.

Both items got a little crushed from being jostled around in my bag of candy samples – when I unwrapped them, they crumbled to pieces. Though for all I know, they might have done that anyway. Both brands gave off a strong, sweet scent of vanilla when unwrapped, but it seemed like that dissipated rather quickly, leaving behind a scent of roasted peanuts, and that’s all.

Flavor and texture-wise, the two brands were practically identical. Since both my samples had crumbled to pieces, I ate the larger chunks first, then the leftover crumbs. (It turns out eating these in bed was a dumb idea, as I had to shake a bunch of sugary crumbs out of my sheets afterward). The texture is not at all like marzipan – there’s nothing soft or spreadable about it. The dry, crumbly, powdery mazapan dissolves in your mouth like powdered sugar, leaving little gritty bits of peanut behind.

At first, the flavor is quite sweet, like eating the aforementioned powdered sugar, but with a strong vanilla flavor (must be the artificial flavor in the ingredients). Then the toasty peanut aftertaste kicks in. These aren’t salty at all, unlike most peanut candies I’ve tried. Sugar and vanilla are the dominant flavors, as well as that nutty, roasty peanut undertone. (I want to say the Mi Mazapan one’s sweeter with more of a vanilla and less of a peanut note, but I think they’re more or less identical.)

Well, I actually found a Mexican candy I like – for the first time, I’m disappointed they don’t sell these in my town. I guess that means something coated in chili and salt is next on my list.

• de la Rosa Website (Spanish)

Buy Mazapan Online:

• at Candy Crate

I have a ton of candy left to review from the All Candy Expo, but I decided I needed a small break from upcoming candy to review some of the candy I already had that happens to have a short lifespan.

My good friend Greg was kind enough to pick up some candy for me from his recent expedition to Europe, which resulted in me receiving a box of Pierre Marcolini truffles. For those of you not familiar with Mr. Marcolini’s work, he is a Parisian chocolatier who travels the world in order to find the best ingredients and flavors for his chocolate.

The round, 15-piece box containing small, spherical truffles dusted in cocoa and set in what looks like a couture hatbox is valued at almost $50, so these are most likely out of your typical Candy Addict’s price range. I was super excited to try them knowing I would otherwise probably never taste such a thing.

Truffe Du Jour: The Truffe Du Jour is Pierre Marcolini’s tribute to the traditional truffle with a dark chocolate ganache made from cocoa beans from Venezuela and rolled in cocoa powder. This piece has an incredibly soft ganache center with a slightly harder shell, but one that is still very pliable. The chocolate quality is very refined, embracing the concept of bitter more than sweet. The taste of this chocolate is an essence, almost like an idea or a hint; rather than scream “I am a Hershey’s Bar!” it dares you to take a bite and figure it out. This chocolate is for food purists.

Truffe Champagne: The Truffe Champagne has a milk chocolate center made with cream and champagne sourced from Saint Martin D’Ablois in the Champagne, France. This piece is softer on the tongue and a bit sweeter because of the milk chocolate involved, a brilliant choice as dark chocolate would drown out the subtle flavors. The champagne is a note amid a chorus of flavors – important, but hardly the centerpiece. Despite containing alcohol, it doesn’t really taste of it. This one was surprisingly easy to enjoy without treading in overpowering waters. My favorite.

Truffe Tonka: The Truffe Tonka has a liquid caramel center infused with the South American spice from the Tonka bean. Enrobed in dark chocolate couverture and covered with deliciously crunchy cocoa nibs, this truffle’s center has a sweet and spicy vanilla-like aroma and herbal fragrance. I was a bit surprised to see tonka bean as an ingredient, considering it’s banned in the U.S. for possessing an anticoagulant property that can cause death if consumed in large amounts. Despite it being the fugu of chocolate, it retains a cinnamon essence that meshes well with vanilla. The flavors involved are very subtle but sophisticated, partly because tonka bean is such a complex flavor that it certainly makes any piece of chocolate quite intriguing.

After eating a box of these, I can say that I do think these are fairly priced… but I happen to like this sort of chocolate. None of the pieces are sweet or bursting with potent flavors. That is because Pierre Marcolini enjoys making you think when you consume his products. What exactly is in this piece? What does this remind me of? How is this different and more surprising than anything I have ever tasted? These answers are all deeply personal and individual, but a pleasant surprise from something as mundane as a gorgeously packaged box of truffles.

• Peirre Marcolini Truffe Website