December 8th: Green & Black's Maya Gold

Kcal 184 Fat 11.8g Carbs 16.9g (per 35.0g)

I must admit that I have been largely ignoring the Green & Black's brand, mostly due to the mediocre experiences I had with both the Butterscotch and White Chocolate variants earlier in the year. I have received many an e-mail since then from readers informing me how good the range is. Taking this into consideration I decided to give Green & Black's another go, and today sampled the Maya Gold, which was comprised of 'dark chocolate with orange & spices'.

The first thing I looked at on the back of the bar was what spices were included - a detail I came to find wasn't listed. I do quite like the packaging with Green & Black's, it isn't quite near the standard of Lindt, Hotel Chocolat etc, but the design is generally nice and I like the colour coding used for the flavours. I also thought the design work on the bar was good - the G&B logos displayed on the surface of each block aesthetically offered a bit of interest. A nice fruity orange scent became very evident once the bar was released from the foil layer. The smell also offered evidence of the spices, I could detect an underlying nutmeg type influence.

The orange and spice elements didn't just leave their impact on the product in the smell, they also had a rather big say in the taste. The product had a reasonably nice melt, with the flavours growing in intensity as it progressed. The dark chocolate on its own was not the most flavoursome, offering quite little in the way of strong cocoa flavours. Thankfully the influence of the orange was in particular quite strong and made for a very long fruity taste. Elements of cinnamon and peppery type flavours noted the aftertaste ... in regards to flavour progression this bar was really quite strong. As you can see from the picture above I sampled this bar in a 35.0g format, this proved a very satisfying amount to eat with my afternoon coffee. 

Overall my belief in the Green & Black's brand has somewhat been rekindled with this offering. Personally I don't think the quality of dark chocolate was that high, it just seemed to lack a real defining flavour base. Thankfully, as the smell suggested the added orange and spice elements were quite impactful and made for quite a strong overall taste. As far as chocolate orange combinations go this wasn't my favourite, but this is still a reasonably good bar of chocolate. I shall be dipping into the Green & Black's brand again soon. 

8.0 out of 10