October 1st: Storck Merci

It has been a long time since I last reviewed a selection box on ChocolateMission but with the holiday season creeping up alarmingly fast (under three months now!) I thought I better get back on the scene and check out the latest market offerings.

Over the last couple of days, thanks to Dean-German-Grocery, I have been sampling the chocolates on offer in this Storck Merci selection box. The Merci box contained eight different flavoured chocolates including - Milk Chocolate, Coffee & Cream, Hazelnut & Almond, Hazelnut-Creme, Marzipan, Dark Cream, Dark Mousse and Praline-Creme variants.

In regards to presentation I was extremely impressed with the product. The outer box looked very stylish and sophisticated combining some prestigious looking fonts with some nicely balanced, gold trimmed pictures. The chocolates themselves also cut a pretty dashing appearance with each one contained within in a nice plastic golden wrapper.

As there were so many flavours I will keep my thoughts on each rather concise:

Marzipan - The outer dark chocolate initially substantiated a generous amount of cocoa flavours but the real star of the show was the inner marzipan. The marzipan was surprisingly very tasty and provided some pleasant sweet, almond based flavours. Not quite Niederegger standards but close. Good.

Coffee & Cream - As you can see from the photo above this was a dual layered chocolate with milk chocolate on top and a creamier layer beneath. The milk chocolate wasn't scintillating in its flavours though the mild cocoa flavours dominated the extremely weak coffee flavours of the cream layer below. I wanted the coffee element to be a lot stronger. Poor.

Milk Chocolate - By all accounts I thought this was a pretty bad milk chocolate. When in the mouth it had an extremely mild set of inoffensive cocoa flavours but when the aftertaste kicked in it was pretty poor. I was left with a sour, yogurt tang in my mouth which I didn't altogether find that nice. One of the poorer milk chocolates I have found in a long time. Very Poor.

Hazelnut Creme - I wasn't all that enamoured with the texture of this chocolate as I found the centre a little too chalky for my liking. Casting this to one side for a second I must say that this one tasted really rather good. Thankfully the milk chocolate took a bit of a backseat, allowing the delicious flavours off the hazelnut to really come through in the taste. The strength of the nut in the taste was fantastic. Very Good.

Praline Creme - Unfortunately where this chocolate tasted deliciously creamy. it lacked the nut flavours I desired. Unlike the Hazelnut Creme flavour of above the hazelnut just really didn't come through in the taste which I found a little disappointing. On a more positive note the inner praline creme had a nice smooth texture which made a nice variation from the denser outer chocolate. Standard.

Dark Mousse - In comparison to the Dark Creme flavour the cocoa flavours were a little milder but were still altogether pretty pleasant. Despite the cocoa not being as forthcoming as the aforementioned I did really like the variation in texture that the lighter centre mousse brought to the chocolate. Standard.

Dark Creme - Without doubt the best from the selection ... I would happily eat a full bar of this stuff, it was simply divine. The cocoa flavours were immediatedly detectable and compelling as soon as the chocolate hit the tongue and sustained their flavour throughout the melt. Whilst the rich cocoa flavours were at play there were always these wonderful cream based undertone in the taste which made for fluid, flowing experience. Superb.

Hazelnut & Almond- A never a fan of having small, bitty pieces of nut in chocolate but to be fair it was hardly lacking in terms of nut flavours. The almond was by and away the dominant of the two which I must say I found a little disappointing since my preference with the two firmly lies with the hazelnut. Due to the smallness of the nut pieces I did find the texture a little rough, though the strength of the nut flavours partially made up for this nuisance. Standard.

Overall like almost all selection boxes this was one with its duds and its diamonds. By far and away the best flavour was the Dark Creme - it was simply superb on all levels and like I said above I would love to try it in a grander form. Other standouts for me were the Marzipan and Hazelnut Creme flavours, though like I have stated above the Milk Chocolate and Coffee & Cream variants were pretty disappointing and certainly didn't leave me wanting more. If you like a wide range of variety in your chocolates then I would suggest that this would be a nice product to try. This Storck Merci collection is far from the best I have ever tried, but at the same time I certainly wouldn't be turning it down if it got gifted to me.

7.8 out of 10

Head to Dean-German-Grocery to for all your German chocolate needs