Part one - Rausch Chocolate

I've come to the conclusion that, health aside, it's probably for the best I need to put weight on right now as I've clearly married a feeder. 

Another day, another knock on the door from a delivery man with a box full of 12 full sized chocolate bars from the German company Rausch. 

The box was beautifully presented, I felt bad ripping the label to open it and inside the chocolates were wrapped in paper with a little seal. There are three of each of the four varietys all with cocoa sourced from a different place. 

The bars all look the same, long and thin with six snappable squares and they weigh in at 40g each. 

Each chocolate contains only four ingredients; cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder and cocoa mass. 

I kicked things off with the bar with highest Cocoa solids, Costa Rican.

Costa Rican has a minimum 47% cocoa solids and a minimum of 18% milk solids. You can go onto the Rausch website and it gives a little detail about each bar. The Costa Rican says 'Especially rich, light coloured chocolate with a fruity flavour made from the best TRINITARIO TSURU fine flavour cocoa in the Turrialba region'. Now I don't fancy myself as a chocolate connoisseur, I love all chocolate, cheap expensive, white, milk, dark - I'm not a snob and I wasn't going to start waving it under my nose like I was tasting a fine wine, I wouldn't know how to to be honest! So I stuck with what I know and I just ate it. Like a Cadbury bar. 

The first thing I noticed was it smelt like actual cocoa and not sugar. To taste was along the same lines, it didn't taste dark as such but the flavour was all chocolate, the cocoa does give way to a milkiness though that was definitely absent at the start of each mouthful. The chocolate was sweet but not sugary sweet like in everyday chocolate at all and despite what Rausch say I didn't detect any fruity notes - I'd be interested to see if someone who knows what they're talking about does. 

Very nice bar and I really enjoyed it. 

7/10 

Next I tried Venezuela - 43% cocoa solids minimum, 19% milk solids minimum and 'Punchy, slightly nutty fine milk chocolate with hints of almond and caramel made from the best Ocumare fine flavour cocoa in the Aragua region'. 

Again it had a wonderfully rich, deep cocoa smell and surprisingly I could actually taste what they were talking about with the hints of caramel. Don't get me wrong it wasn't like eating a caramel bar or anything like that but there was definitely something reminiscent of caramel I could taste, I missed any almond notes though. It was slightly sweeter than the Costa Rican bar and milkier all round rather than just at the end of each bite but the overall flavour was definitely more of a cocoa chocolate than any milky sweetness though. Everyone says have a couple of squares of a dark chocolate to satisfy your sweet tooth but that doesn't work for me, I'll sit and eat 100g bars of 80% and still want more but I can honestly say this is the first bar that properly hit the spot, it was rich and luxurious tasting and my chocolate craving was satisfied in one smallish hit. 

Delicious. 

8/10