Last Friday I mentioned during my Tequila Candy review that I'd also received a bar of chocolate containing Tequila. That bar comes all the way from Mexico from a company named Villa Vainilla, who seem primarily to sell vanilla extract though they do sell various other goodies in Duty Free at the airport.
Rather than a description of any sort of the chocolate on the packet, there is a full on essay on the origins of chocolate. I'm sure you can Google it if you have any interest.
The ingredients list is without a doubt the shortest I've ever seen on any chocolate bar: Cacoa, sugar, agave syrup and lecithin. Note the absence of tequila in any shape or form.
Some snooping on the company website informs me that Maria Tepoztlán Xocolatl is different to other chocolates because it contains more than 70% cacoa and 25% sugar. Yes those Mexicans sure love their sugar!
The bar hadn't travelled very well and had a slight bloom and was quite scuffed. It weighed 200g but was no longer than a standard 120g bar of Cadbury, it was ridiculously thick though and was sectioned into 6 squares with the company logo etched into a larger one in the centre,
It wasn't as dark as I expected considering what it's made from but it was darker than a standard milk chocolate.
If you Google Maria Tepoztlán Xocolatl Chocolate you will read page upon page of negative comments - "waxy tasting" "the worst chocolate I've ever tried in my life" "disgusting, I threw it away" - now most of these comments either a) come from Americans (before you jump down my throat, most Americans who will be buying chocolate from Duty Free in Cancun are going to be used to Hersheys High Fructose Corn Syrup style stuff) b) are from quite a while back or c) are the standard plain bar. If you specifically Google the Tequila flavour or find the newer posts, the comments are a lot more positive.
My bar, thankfully, is the Tequila purchased in January 2016.
I told you it was thick! It was literally impossible to break any off apart from along the indentations. So what you're looking at is 100g of hefty chocolate!
It smelt amazing, incredibly rich smelling with a strong cocoa scent but strangely nothing like a British bar of 'dark' chocolate. One of the most tempting chocolate bars I've smelt for a long while.
One thing I can agree on with the negative reviews, though I disagree with it being a bad thing, is that the chocolate has a strange gritty texture. In fact, you can even see the grittiness in the photos, Apparently it's due to the cacoa being stone ground, I have no clue if that is true but I like to think it is, it adds a touch of authenticity!
Amongst the gritty chocolate were whole pieces of cacoa beans. They were crunchy and quite small but added a new mix in to the already interesting textures at play. They didn't add to much in terms of taste but I enjoyed them nonetheless.
I expected a dark, bitter tasting chocolate as the packet goes into great detail about how the word chocolate comes from Xocolatl which means bitter water, but there was no bitterness whatsoever. I actually really enjoyed the chocolate, it had a sweet vanilla flavour which I can't for the life of me work out where it came from, its certainly not listed in the ingredients. It has a lovely, rich cocoa flavour too but unsurprisingly as it has at least 25% sugar (so a good 50g of the 200g bar) it was very sweet. Mexicans are renowned for their use of 'real' sugar though and it shows - none of the artificial sickliness and burning sweetness just a good old fashioned addictive sugar hit.
Strangely it had a sort of milky taste to it too, not milky like proper Cadbury Dairy Milk but nothing like ordinary dark chocolate. I say strangely as there is no milk or anything even resembling milk in the ingredients at all.
The whole time I was waiting for the Tequila flavour to kick in like in the Candies but it was nowhere to be found. Nothing, zilch, nada, jack.. I have absolutely no clue why it's even on the packet, maybe to lure gullible spring break tourists in to buy it, but I didn't miss it anyway.
Rating:
I have a few theories on why my review will be so different to others online, due to the reasons I've previously mentioned - regional tastes, new recipe or different flavour but I think it's one of those Marmite products. You either love it or hate it, I adore Marmite so it's quite right that I really bloody enjoyed this too!
8/10
