Marks and Spencer Swiss Milk Extra Fine Chocolate > Reviews (3)

There is a very famous quote comparing Italy and Switzerland. Something along the lines of the Swiss have had 500 years of democracy and peace and all they have given the world is the cuckoo clock whereas the Italians who have had 500 years of turmoil have given the world so many more useful inventions. Well good for Italy.

But the Swiss have not just given the world the cuckoo clock. Far from it. You see the Swiss are responsible for much chocolate innovation which I feel has been overlooked by the world at large. Swiss chocolate ranks as among the finest in the world. So what if they haven’t managed to make any great inventions, they’ve made damn good chocolate.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to sample some genuine, bona fide, bought in Switzerland Swiss Chocolate

when friends have travelled to the little nation and brought some back home. You could tell it was Swiss because it had pictures of Swiss homes and mountains on the wrappers. And it was damn good chocolate, there was just nothing that you could buy in Britain that could compare. Then one day I tried Marks and Spencer’s Swiss Milk Chocolate and it tasted exactly like the genuine Swiss chocolate. Problem solved.

You can buy this wonderful chocolate at your nearest Marks and Spencer’s store. For your ease of purchase it is can usually be found near the checkouts so you won’t tire yourself out carrying it around the store. It can be bought in either blocks of Chocolate like you get with Cadbury’s Dairy Milk or in tubes of individually wrapped Discs of the chocolate. My preference is for the tube which weighs 115gram and cost me £1.69.

The tube containing the discs is made of cardboard with a plastic lid. The tube is cream coloured with a picture of the Matterhorn and the chocolate discs themselves on it. There is also a little Swiss flag with the phrase “Quality purveyors of Swiss Chocolate”. Marksies have also included a little blurb about this chocolate which basically promises me chocolate heaven due to the fact that they have only used Swiss milk and have milled the cocoa beans for even longer to create “a melt in the mouth texture”. The tube also warns that the chocolate contains nut’s, cow’s milk (but remember they are Swiss cows) and soya.

The tube is easy to break into and inside I am pleased to discover 22 discs each one individually wrapped in blue foil. The foil is very willing to be removed from the chocolate to reveal the discs themselves. Each disc is roughly an inch and a half in diameter and it is sunken in the centre. It looks like a very shallow pet’s water bowl. Each disc is very shiny and smooth. The aroma that greet you is probably worth the price alone. It is a smell that has a combination of the bitterness of cocoa, mixed with the sweet creaminess and added to that there is also a distinct savoury nuttiness that comes from the addition of ground hazelnuts to the chocolate.

Chocolate such as this should not be chewed. It should be placed on the tongue and allowed to melt.

This is what I do with the first disc. As the disc slowly melts into the promised silken river on my tongue it yields a delicately creamy, vanilla taste that is balanced by the bitter (but not too bitter) cocoa taste with just a hint of the woody savouryness that the ground hazelnuts provide. It is sweet without being too sweet. It is also very, very moreish and because it is so fine you could probably eat a whole whack without feeling sick.

I recommend this chocolate to anyone who finds the brands of block chocolate from Cadbury’s, Nestle and Galaxy to be too sweet and thinks that their texture is too claggy. I would also recommend this to just about anyone who loves good chocolate because this is right up there. It is perfect for those occasions when you just need a chocolate hit. I also think that the individually wrapped discs would be good to serve with coffee at the end of a dinner party as they look and taste suitably posh.

Admittedly this chocolate is rather more expensive than a similar amount of Cadbury’s or Galaxy. However it is a better quality of chocolate. I would buy this as an everyday chocolate. It is more one of those things you buy yourself as a treat. And because each disc is individually wrapped you can have a couple without having to eat it all so a single tube could last a few days, weeks or even months. As such I would say that it does provide good value for money.

Eating this chocolate has put me in a reflective mood. It this is what the inventors of the cuckoo clock can create in a democratic environment just imagine what kind of chocolate delights would emerge if there was world peace. Does anybody know if the President of the USA is a chocoholic?