October 20th: Green & Black's Milk Chocolate

Kcal 558 Fat 35.9g Carbs 49.7g (per 100.0g)

I don't know about you all but I am still hugely undecided on Green & Black's as a brand. Some of their products I have tried before and thought they were rather good, whilst others I thought were decidedly average. It is a well known fact that Green & Black's are actually owned by Cadbury, so when I saw this new 'Creamy Milk' variant I was wondering whether it was going to match up to the UK's most notorious milk chocolate - Cadbury Dairy Milk. Organically made and with a greater cocoa proportion (30%) all the evidence suggested that it was going to give it a good run for its money.

Like all Green & Black's chocolates this one came in a 100.0g size which was split up in to several very small sized blocks. I have complained about the Green & Black's packaging before but If you look closely at the the photo above you will notice that that the traditional brown colour and flavour indicating secondary colour have been swapped around in terms of position compared to the standard bars in the range. Personally I think this gave the product far more standout and when you see it on-shelf in the retailer it looks far more inviting than the rest of the standard range which carry the boring looking primary brown colour scheme. Inside the chocolate was nicely wrapped in a gold foil layer but it did little to excite aesthetically given the tiny size of each of the blocks. Whereas it was a little underwhelming in terms of looks the same couldn't be said for the aroma of the chocolate which had a nice fresh dairy smell.

Lets just cut right to the chase - was it as good as Dairy Milk? For my money it wasn't, but that is not to say it wasn't a reasonably good milk chocolate. I shared this with a few work colleagues over a mid morning coffee and we all pretty much drew the conclusions. What we certainly all agreed on was that this chocolate had a delightfully smooth melt that really effortlessly transcended into a very soft chocolate liquor when simply just placed on the tongue. Although the chocolate was quite fast in the pace of it's melt it didn't really generate much in the way of flavours until it had progressed quite far in the melting process. Whereas the initial taste was disappointingly mild only substantiating quite a sweet milk based cocoa tone, once the chocolate had gained warmth strong notes of cream and vanilla came through relatively strongly and made for a well rounded taste. To be honest this wasn't the most satisfying of chocolates I have ever eaten and my colleagues and I did manage to consume about a third of a bar each with relative ease.

Overall despite this bar being at a premium price to its even grander mass produced equivalent Cadbury Dairy Milk I have to say in my estimation it didn't match up in terms of quality. Cadbury Dairy Milk has such a distinctive cream based that this Green & Black's offering just simply couldn't match up to. Although I would say that this chocolate was a little more elegant in terms of it's flavours I wouldn't say that was necessarily a good thing and I think in comparison I would rather the more burly, stronger and more distinctive taste of the Dairy Milk. As I said in the previous paragraph this was by no means a bad chocolate whatsoever but at the same time it did very little in terms of establishing itself as a distinctive chocolate that is any more worthy of trying than any other fair standard milk chocolate on the market at present. Given the smooth texture and flowing taste of this chocolate I would suggest that Galaxy lovers give this chocolate a try as it may be more a chocolate they might quite enjoy. For the moment though I think I will stick with my Hotel Chocolat for my premium milk chocolate and my Cadbury Dairy Milk for my everyday.

7.9 out of 10