October 27th: Lindt Christmas Punch

Kcal ??? Fat ??? Fat(sats) ??? Carbs ???

When sifting through the vast bunch of Christmas samples that Dean-German-Grocery sent me, this Lindt offering immediately caught my eye. Now I have never heard of 'Christmas Punch' before but according to Lindt it involves a concoction of cinnamon and rum ... sounds interesting huh!? Well this bar incorporated these 'punch' elements in the form of a liquid filling sitting inside milk chocolate ... I was intrigued!!

I am one for rattling on about how classy Lindt present their products, and this product did little to change my mind on this. The outer packaging had a lovely shiny golden effect - one that my camera really didn't do justice for as you will see above. As well as beautiful outer packaging the bar itself didn't look half bad either. The liquid 'Punch' filling was contained within several pods, each of which were impressively branded with the Lindt logo. The smell of the bar was what I can only describe as very forthcoming. Releasing the bar from its inner foil packaging I was met with an almost overpowering smell of rum - as you will learn later when I describe the taste this wasn't entirely preferable.

To really asses the quality of the chocolate I really had to tune myself into looking past the amazingly dominant rum flavours. The chocolate was quite a weak formulation for Lindt, containing only 30% cocoa solids. When tasted in isolation from the filling it had a smooth milky taste, and was heavily noted with cinnamon - to be honest I find it almost pointless describing the taste of the chocolate as this was a product about one thing, and one thing only ... the rum!! According for only 6% of the total constituents this was never going to be a situation where eating a whole bar would result in the consumer seeing double and having a sudden urge for Karaoke :) ... saying that I must say it was bloody strong and completely dominated all the other flavours of the bar. Now I am no rum expert but even I could tell this wasn't good quality rum. I'm a poor student who has drank some god damn awful spirits in my time, but to be honest this ranked up there with the Tesco Value stuff ... paint stripper anyone!?? The rum element smelt bad, tasted bad and even manged to ruin the smooth melt of the chocolate with its coarse crystallised texture ... need I say more??

Overall the novelty factor of this bar is high, however at the heart of the matter, it is just a really poor tasting bar. The rum is frankly awful - and its dominance of every other element of the bar pretty much spoils the product. Lindt as ever presented this product beautifully, given as a 'joke' gift it would actually look pretty classy ... unfortunately the laughs would soon stop upon tasting the thing. I may be well off on my own on this one ... but imagine that cheap bottle of booze at the back of your parents liquor cupboard that probably hasn't seen light of day for 30 odd years!?? ... well this is it in chocolate bar form!

5.6 out of 10

Fancy trying the Lindt Christmas Punch for yourself!? Fancy any another Ritter Sport / Milka / Lindt / Storck or German Grocery ... head over to Dean-German-Grocery!!