At long last, I have another chocolate taste testing! I must admit, I always buy chocolate when I travel with the intention of taste testing it for the blog but then I stare at the pile and I just can’t face it. But since I can’t travel at the moment, this is chocolate available in the UK. We can still go shopping, right? And chocolate definitely counts as “essentials”.
In the German corner we have Ritter Sport, those delightful square blocks that I usually get from Lidl. On the downside, I only have milk. I love the praline one and I like the mint cream one but my local Lidl doesn’t have them.
In the Dutch corner, we have Tony Chocolonely, which is less about being Dutch and more about being slavery-free. Or as slavery-free as they can, because they freely admit on their website “we’ve been striving to make chocolate 100% slave free […]we’re not there yet. Our chocolate is still not 100% slave free”.
So, the looks. Ritter is square, as usual, and this is the 100g version. The packaging is shiny and plastic, which keeps it fresh but also, you know, plastic.
Tony’s (180g) is packaged in paper and the chocolate itself inside is wrapped in foil. Like Ritter would be if I had more varieties, it’s colour-coded by flavour. The red one is the 32% cocoa milk version, like ordinary milk chocolate. The blue one is 42% cocoa and this is called “dark milk”. Because the only indication of the flavour is the stripe down the side, it’s not immediately obvious what flavour something it on the shelf. It’s good-looking packaging but it’s a bit too simple. I prefer to not have to stand in front of a shelf trying to figure it out for ten minutes.
And then there’s the inside. Ritter, in its organised stereotypical German way, is in nice even squares, four to a side. Tony’s is chaos and that’s deliberate. It represents the inequality in the chocolate industry and the bottom line of chunks represents chocolate-producing countries across the Equator from Ivory Coast to part of Cameroon.
Obviously, the dark milk is the darkest chocolate. The two milks are so similar that I’ve had to examine them under my special lamp but if you held a gun to my head, I’d say the Ritter is a tiny tiny bit more yellow. It also has a shinier finish, whereas the Tony’s is fairly matte.
And finally, the price. My parents were horrified that each bar of Tony’s is £3.50. That’s £1.94 per 100g. Ritter, on the other hand, is £1 per bar, which is £1 per 100g. If you get the smaller Tony’s bars, the 47g ones, they work out at £2.87 per 100g, so it’s more cost-effective to buy the big bars.
Most importantly, how does it taste?
Ritta first. It’s pleasing. It’s milk chocolate and yes, I can taste a hint of milk, besides the obvious milkiness of the chocolate. Is there a hint of artificial flavour? If there is, it’s only a hint. Ritter is good chocolate.
Tony’s 32% next. I think this is a little bit milkier. Just a little bit. I think the Ritter is slightly richer and I think there’s the faintest suggestion of… not sourness, but a hint right at the back of it not being quite as good as the Ritter. But it’s so close. This is also good chocolate.
And last, Tony’s 42%. I have high hopes for this. Mondelez have recently gone crazy for dark milk and I adore it in both Cadbury’s and Milka. And yes, it’s definitely not milky, although it’s still a milk chocolate. Having a higher cocoa content, it’s slightly more bitter but it’s not bitter, it’s just less sweet and more rich. If you’re in the market for a dark milk, this is the winner of the three, which is why I’m continuing to eat it even though lunch is in less than half an hour.
If you don’t mind it being a bit darker, Tony’s 42% is the winner here. Of the milks, I think Ritter just edges it but it’s very close and I’d be very happy to eat both. I’d recommend to both of them that they make an orange version, maybe even a crispy orange version