April 11th: Thorntons 61% Dark Chocolate with Ginger

Kcal 505 Fat 33.9g Fat(sats) 21.3g Carbs 43.5g (per 100.0g)

It has taken me a while to get round to Thorntons' new line of 'square bars', though I think my hesitance is justified given some of the poor efforts they have produced in the past. Coming in square shaped bars Thorntons' latest range cuts a very 'Ritter Sport' esque look. Today I tried one of the more appetising looking bars from the range - the 'Togo 61% Cocoa Dark Chocolate with Ginger'. I was hoping that given my previous success with the Thorntons Dark Chocolate and Ginger Bar that similar results might be seen here. 

It appears that the people in the Thorntons factory forgot to add the last 10.0g of my chocolate, as it came in a rather puzzling 90.0g size. Despite my slight resentment at the resemblance to Ritter Sport, I thought the product looked pretty good. The outer cardboard packaging was simplistic, yet stylish in its use of colours and fonts, whilst the bar itself was protected within an inner plastic sheath. As you will be able to see above the bar was uniquely split, with some double sized chunks included between the smaller single piece sized - a nice idea I thought. A strong spicy, ginger smell soon made itself evident as I unsealed the plastic packaging - it was comforting to know I was going to get my desired ginger hit. 

Over the course of 15 months we haven't seen many charts like the one below. This bar tasted pretty good ... very good in fact. Unfortunately though it had a pretty big problem with its texture, which was evident from the off. In regards to taste it wasn't the strongest tasting dark chocolate ever, though it exerted a clean, mild and unsweetened cocoa influence that I would say on the whole was really quite pleasant. The ginger element was delivered well through the implementation of not only ginger oil, but also some crystallised ginger pieces that thankfully saved the texture from being completely abysmal. As strong and pleasant as the ginger was it all proved slightly pointless due to the melting nature of the chocolate. The chocolate melted into an extremely fine, thin liquid that neither let the flavours fully express themselves, or give chance to long in the mouth. The texture gave the bar a diluted, almost watered down like feel, which I am sure you can imagine made for a really unsatisfying chocolate.

Overall I found this to be a really disappointing product, as the flavours were there ... but just weren't allowed to fulfill their potential. With dark chocolate you generally expect the taste experience to be long, and sustained in the mouth. Unfortunately this just simply wasn't the case here. The thin melt alone made for an ultimately unsatisfactory product that frustrated me more than anything. Not a great start for this new range of Thorntons bars, but I would be interested to hear all your views. 

6.8 out of 10