October 21st: Lindt Nocciolatte

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

I have been wanting to see something like this from Lindt for ages and it took a random visit to WH Smith (popular book/convenience shop in the UK) for me to finally chance upon such a product. Personally I think the market has been screaming out for an 'on the go' chocolate bar from one of the more prestigious manufactures like Lindt for a long time and this Lindt Nociolatte seemed like the perfect product in which to fill this gaping niche. Produced in Italy the product came described as 'milk chocolate with hazelnut filling and whole hazelnuts' and came at the suitable price of 65p, which here in the UK is at a slight premium to a standard chocolate bar like Cadbury Dairy Milk that retails for about 55p.

The bar came in a 40.0g serving size that was split into three separate blocks. The bar itself wasn't the most conveniently designed as one block at a time made for a very large and almost uncomfortable mouthful. That slight issue aside I will happily exclaim that I thought the bar was aesthetically brilliant and I loved the subtle branding of each piece as well as the nice hazelnut pattern that was implemented on each block. The outer wrapper was equally well designed and incorporated the same smart looking design theme as Lindt's standard range with its dark blue colour and white and gold fonts. In addition to looking rather sleek the bar also smelt pretty nice out the packet and had a nice nutty scent in addition to the familiar Lindt chocolaty smell.

Despite parts of this bar tasting phenomenal I have to give it a rather mediocre 7.0 score when it comes to that taste test as there was just one aspect that let it down completely. The outer milk chocolate you will be unsurprised to hear was pretty phenomenal and provided a very familiar double cream rooted taste that delivered a wonderful chocolate hit with it's finally balanced cocoa volume and smooth longing taste. Below the wonderfully smooth melting chocolate sat the first hazelnut element which was a praline like substance that held the whole nut in position. In terms of quality these elements sat at different ends of the spectrum in that the praline was fantastic, whilst the wholenuts just simply weren't. The praline had slightly grittier texture than the chocolate which nicely differentiated the two in the melt. The cause of the rougher texture was of course the addition of the ground hazelnuts which provided a wonderfully fresh, woody nut taste. Whereas the praline tasted relatively fresh the same couldn't be said for the nut pieces. They had a slightly mushy, yielding soft texture and provided very little flavour in addition to the praline which was obviously pretty disappointing.

Overall this was a disappointing product on the whole considering how much promise the actual concept has. I think the decision to make a product like this was a great strategic move by Lindt as it brings a whole new 'occasion' to the table for their chocolate to be enjoyed. As good as Lindt chocolate is, their products are not the most convenient to eat out of home as they normally come in sizes upwards of 100.0g etc. As 40.0g bar this product solved that problem but didn't quite deliver the quality that is normally so consistent with Lint products. Despite being eight months in date the products nuts just didn't taste fresh and almost (not entirely) ruined the other fantastic milk chocolate and praline elements. If you see this bar around then I would say give it a try as maybe I just had a duff one? Unfortunately for Lindt though products on this site most the time only get one shot at the scoring system! Not great ... not awful, but Lindt can certainly do better than this.

7.5 out of 10