Coromandel Chocolate is a chocolate maker that is new to us, so we were excited to pick up a few bars from them at the Choc Stock festival.

Coromandel Chocolate is a family owned business in Whangamata, New Zealand.  They make their chocolate from beans sourced from Malekula in Vanuatu Archipelago.  They use earth conscious packaging and ethical ingredients.

The first bar to taste:  A milk chocolate, Toasted Coconut Rough with Passionfruit.

Joni is a coconut rough fan, Joey is not, so you will  get both sides with this one.
This is certainly a coconut rough with lots of coconut.  Sugar is the 2nd listed ingredient, but it is suprisingly only slightly sweet.  It is tangy.  The passionfruit gives a tangy dried fruit flavour with just a hint of passionfruit taste.  We like that the passionfruit is not a strong flavour.  Sometimes passionfruit in chocolate can  be a bit overpowering and sickly, but here it is a nice and gives the coconut rough an added yumminess.... if you like coconut rough.  The chocolate flavours are a very mild backdrop.  If you like coconut rough,  then this is nice.  If you are not a coconut rough fan, this won't change your mind.

This is a bar was one of the one we bought from Baron Hasselhoff's when we attended the Wellington ChocStock Festival.

The Cheese Bar is 60% Vanuatu Origin Cacao milk chocolate.  It is blended with an award winning aged danbo cheese from Hohepa Cheese.  Here is a link to the cheese:  Hohepa Danbo Cheese

They say on the cheese website that Danbo is similar to Dutch Gouda.
When we sampled it at ChocStock, we could immediately taste the cheese as well as the chocolate.  We opened the chocolate bar after lunch with the Wellington Gazetters.  Because part of our lunch was a cheese, some of us found it nullified the taste of the cheese in the chocolate.  Peter tasted it as an aftertaste.  Johanan tasted it straight away, but the rest of us could only taste the cheese in the chocolate after we drank some water and cleansed our palates.

This is a clever blending of flavours.  The slightly yeasty, sour tang of cheese and chocolate flavours go so well together.  There is a sweetness that is just right, and even though it is a milk chocolate, the chocolate  comes through quite strong.  We really enjoyed this one.

4 new bars from the Baron's is tastebud happy days!

First a duo from Papua New Guinea.  
PAPUA NEW GUINEA70% DARK
Single Origin from the Manabu Plantation

We tasted a chocolate that had a slight peppery wood flavour to it.  There was also some notes of vanilla and a sweet tanginess.  There was also some milkiness to it, even though this was not a milk bar.  This bar was very nice.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA DARK MILK 60%
Single origin from the Manabu Plantation.
​

This bar had the same lit match, wood pepper flavours and had more fruitiness, raisin, wine flavours coming through than the dark.  Really, really yum!

The tasting notes from the Baron on the Papua New Guinea single origins are:
honey caramel, dark cherry and cinnamon butter.

COCONUT, BLACK PEPPER AND NIB DARK CHOCOLATE 69%

This bar has cacao from the Anamalai Estate in India.  The nibs are from Chiapas, Mexico.
We loved the texture of the nibs in this chocolate.  We got flavour notes of pepper, coconut, cherry, apricot, maple syrup and red wine.  This was our favourite of the 4!

JAGUAR VS CHIAPAS CACAO
This bar has 2 types of Mexican cacao in one bar.  There is the Theobroma Bicolour, (Jaguar Cacao), from Oaxaca Mexico and the Theobroma Cacao from Chiapas Mexico.

We are presuming the light coloured is the Jaguar cacao.  There is no milk in this bar, but this light chocolate has a mild buttery, creaminess to it.  It's flavours reminded us of plum pudding and vanilla custard.

The darker side, (Chiapas) is more intense in flavour and we got notes of cherry, plum and strawberry jam.  We liked the darker side the best.

This foursome was so good!  They are really fun tasting experience combo.  We really enjoyed comparing the dark and the dark milk of the Papua New Guinea single origins and they are up there with our favourite Papua New Guinea bars.  The flavours of the Coconut and Black Pepper  chocolate makes our mouths water thinking about it.  And what a fun way to finish off the tasting, comparing the two Theobrama bean types.
Still huge fans of the Baron!!

Our friends are starting to catch on we LOVE chocolate.  We recently got our favourite type of pressie.....

Here is how we ranked them:
1ST - WHITTAKERS WEST COAST BUTTERMILK CARAMELISED WHITE CHOCOLATE

Yummy white chocolate with caramel flavour notes, with an under note of vanilla.

2ND - LINDT EXCELLENCE SEA SALT CARAMEL

Nice caramel vanilla flavour.  Very mild cocoa flavour.

3RD - WHITTAKERS HAWKES BAY BLACK DORIS PLUM AND ROASTED ALMONDS

The Whittakers dark has a crisper bite than the Lindt dark.  This has nice plum flavours.  There is also a nice almond texture with a hint of almond taste and an under note of dark chocolate.

​4TH - LINDT EXCELLENCE MANGO AND ALMOND

5TH - WHITTAKERS FIJIAN GINGER AND KERIKERI MANDARIN

Johanan is not a fan of citrus and chocolate.  Its just a preference.  The Mandarin flavours are prominent alongside the dark chocolate flavour, then the ginger take over.  All the flavours are there so if you like those flavours, you will like this.

​6TH - LINDT EXCELLENCE CARAMILISED HAZELNUT

You can taste the caramel.  The hazelnut and dark chocolate flavours are very mild.

​What would be your favourites?

We have noticed a new 100g block chocolate range appearing on our store shelves.  The brand name is
Belgid 'Or and the local offerings are a milk chocolate, milk hazelnut, dark sea salt, dark orange.  These are fairly cheaply priced at under $3. 
The chocolate is made in Belgium and is distributed by Foodstuffs.  There is 34% cocoa solids and 19% milk solids in the milk chocolate bar.   We tried the milk version.

The chocolate was very sweet and milky.  There wasn't much cocoa flavour.  It reminded us of the chocolate in Kinder Suprises.  I think we have much nicer chocolate in our supermarkets in New Zealand.  We are a bit underwhelmed by this one and not that keen to try the other variants.  We probably will at some stage just to log them in the reviews.

We bundled up on some of the new offerings from Cadbury, including a new chocolate covered sweet under their Pascall label.

PASCALL HOKEY POKEY LUMPS

Pineapple Lumps are iconic in New Zealand.  Chocolate covered, soft tangy sweets.  These Hokey Pokey lumps had the hokey pokey flavour, but were quite sweet.  Joni missed the tang from the pineapple lumps.  

​CADBURY CARAMILK MARVELLOUS CREATIONS

We are not really a fan of popping candy in chocolate, or of caramilk really.  The combo with jelly lollies and candy covered chocolate pebbles in the caramilk chocolate is actually quite fun and yum.  We liked this one and would buy this over their other marvellous creations blocks.

CADBURY SLICES: VANILLA AND PASSIONFRUIT  PLUS OLD GOLD MINT CREME

The passionfruit jelly is yummy in the vanilla passionfruit block.  We like this jelly filling more than chocolate flavoured with passionfruit oil.  We would buy this one again.

Old Gold mint creme has the same flavour as the mint slices biscuit you can buy from Griffins.  There is little crunchy mint bits we thought were a bit odd.  We aren't a fan of Cadbury dark chocolate, so we wouldn't buy this one again.

We were very excited to discover a new chocolate maker for us in New Zealand: Wonderland Chocolate.
Wonderland Chocolate is based in Lyall Bay, Wellington.  They create bean to bar plant based milk chocolate goodies.  They use Uncommon Cacao, transperant trade beans for their chocolate.

The bars we bought are milk chocolate made with cashew milk.  We loved the packaging artwork.

 ROCKET MAN ROY SMOOTH CASHEW MILK CHOCOLATE
50% cocoa solids from the Dominican Republic.
The chocolate is very smooth and melty.  It has a nice strong chocolate flavour for a milk chocolate.  There is a mild nut flavour to it and some wood and vanilla notes.  It has a nice sweetness that is not overly done.  This is one of the nicest plant based milk chocolate we have tasted and is definitely going onto our 'Favourites' page.

STAN THE STRONGMAN STRAWBERRY & CHAMPAGNE
The same cashew milk chocolate with 49% cacao.  The cocoa beans have been soaked in Champagne and the chocolate bar has a scattering of dried strawberries.

The champagne and strawberries weren't distinct flavors, but together they added tang and berry fruit flavor notes to the wood, musk, vanilla notes of the chocolate.

RONNIE & RITA HAZELNUT PLUM
The cashew milk chocolate this time is 44% with hazelnuts and a scattering of dried Black Doris Plum.
That same yummy wood, musk, vanilla chocolate notes, combined with some definite hazelnut flavours with a hint of plum.  This was a dessert like combo for us. 

We really liked this cashew milk chocolate.  Can't wait to try more from Wonderland Chocolate.

There was a clearance on some fairtrade chocolate at our local Countdown.  We had never tried the Dark Passionfruit before, so we grabbed it.

55% Organic Fairtrade chocolate.  Cacao from Dominican Republic, Peru and Paraguay.  Ingredients also includes 4% freeze dried passionfruit.

The freeze dried passionfruit is nice and tangy and goes well with dark chocolate flavours.  The dark chocolate flavours are there, but hard to pick out different flavour notes through the passionfruit.  The passionfruit was too strong for Johanan, but Joni liked it.

Another bar we picked up from Capers Cafe in Rotorua, was Ocho Peppermint Crunch.  This was just a limited release.  Made with 49% single origin cacao from the Pacific Islands, it also includes bits of hard peppermint candy.

The peppermint bits are really crunchy.  We sucked on this chocolate rather than chew it.  The chocolate was slightly fruity in flavour.  It was great we could taste both the chocolate and the peppermint and that the peppermint didn't overpower the chocolate.  We think Ocho did a great job of balancing the flavours here.

We always enjoy Ocho creations.  They offer flavours just a bit different from the norm.

This is another find from the Rotorua Capers Cafe.
Bennetto Natural foods Company, Pistachios in 60% dark chocolate.  The cacao is from Samoa.  The other ingredients include: 15% Pistachios, sea salt, vanilla beans and cane sugar.  This bar is vegan and fairtrade.

The chocolate was smooth and melty.  You could taste the pistachios and a pinch of salt.  There was flavours of vanilla and wood with a hint of pepper.  Everything seemed nice and complimentary.  We liked it.