Green & Black’s – Organic Dark Chocolate 70%
As my tastes mature, I am still very much an easily excitable person when it comes to snacks. I’m not ashamed to admit that I still gravitate towards exciting or new flavours, and fall for the novelty of a lot of things. However, I can still appreciate classics that never go out of style, like a plain old 70% dark chocolate bar. It’s been said before that these non-gimmicky, classic, simplistic flavours are what are hardest to truly master and do well. I tend to agree with this sentiment, and would judge a brand based on their ability to do the more no-frills flavours, without all the bells and whistles to hide behind. While this isn’t my first foray with Green & Black’s I also haven’t had much experience overall, so I figured this is a good way to kick things off.
Green & Black’s started out as a British chocolate company back in the early 90s and began as more of a premium brand, focusing on ethical sourced ingredients and being non-GMO and organic and all that fancy stuff. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t care so much about that stuff as much as whether the product itself is good or not. I try to look at snacks in a vacuum, so unless the ingredients are sourced from the tears of baby red pandas or something unforgivable, I try to keep it out of the context of the review. I especially place less emphasis on it in this case, because shortly after it’s humble beginnings, it was bought out by Cadbury and as a result, is owned by Mondelez. They own most of the brands you see in snack and candy aisles, so make of that what you will.
Cocoa liquor is a product of the process in making chocolate. In some chocolates, it takes on an almost alcoholic taste, but fear not for this is simply due to fermentation and there is no alcohol content. At least, not that I’m aware of. Anyways, I bring this up because the first thing I tasted when putting a piece of this in my mouth is the rich chocolate flavour that had that cocoa flavour, with a noticeable alcohol flavour. That is to say, these tasted real good. Real rich though, as you’d expect from a quality dark chocolate. It has a nice slightly bitter aroma to it, and is honestly something I haven’t had in a while, so I appreciate this.
The texture is pretty standard – dark chocolate at higher percents tend to be less smooth and sometimes leave a gritty or chalky feeling in your mouth. This is no different, and it’s largely due to lower milk fat and sugar content compared to milk chocolates.While I like to think of 55% to 60% as snacking dark chocolate – the version that’s chewable and has other stuff like nuts with it, this is more of a “let it melt in your mouth” chocolate. If you try chewing it outright it might feel a bit chalky, which is somewhat common in higher percent dark chocolate.
Would I get this again? You bet. I think I’ve found my new go to whenever I’m craving a more quality dark chocolate bar. These are pricier than your typical bars like Hershey’s and other mass market bars, but they aren’t quite as pricey as the premium, fancy or “artisanal” bars. This is a happy medium for people who want a quality product, but don’t want something too expensive or hard to find. For that, I give this a seal of approval.
