The 70% Selection
For every mainstream bar available at your local servo or handmade chocolate crafted by dedicated shop owners, there is still the measuring stick for the more serious aficionado – the 70% cocoa solids block. Today it’s time to have a look at four of the biggest sellers. The four blocks I can always get my hands on are Green and Black’s, Nestle Club, Cadbury Old Gold and Lindt. Is 70% just seventy percent regardless of the brand or bar? Can they really differ that much when nearly three quarters of it is cocoa butter and most of the rest is sugar? When does it become endurance instead of enjoyment? So many questions, so much chocolate to analyse….
Firstly, the Green and Black’s, which gets a bonus point (not that I’m into awarding points) for being organic. It contains Trinitario beans, which means that it’s a hybrid of the rare (only 5% of world’s total production, low yielding) and highly-valued Criollo and the much more hardy and prolific Forastero (hence better quality than Forastero, but better yielding and easier to grow than Criollo). Interestingly, Green and Blacks was established in London in 1991, but this bar is made in Italy and imported to Australia.
Before eating it, I’ll keep on being poncey and tell you that it has 41.1 grams of fat per 100g, of which 24.2 is saturated. There’s 29.4 grams of sugar and – inexplicably to me, anyway – there’s ‘organic whole milk powder’ listed as the last ingredient. I thought that 70% was without dairy…? It’s always good to hear the firm ‘snap’ which indicates quality, but if you snap off entire rows instead of squares like I do, it sounds a bit more like a ‘thock’. Sucking it slowly reveals a bitter coffee taste – not unpleasant, but strong and intense. When it’s half-dissolved, chewing it then reveals sweeter flavours. This is definitely one to savour slowly.
Nestle’s Club dark’s other flavours (cherry and cashews, peppermint) has less cocoa solids than this one, their most serious in the range. This has the most fat of all four bars under review today, with 44.7 grams per 100g, of which 27.2 is saturated. Therefore the sugar content is the lowest, at 27.2 grams per 100g. The ingredients include butter oil (the only one that does) and it is really obvious as soon as you taste this.
Quite apart from the Green and Black’s, Nestle’s Club 70% has a coconut-ty flavour. It’s by no means unpleasant, but just tastes entirely different to Green and Black’s. I love the elegantly large ‘picture frame’ squares the chocolate is divided into, which allows for several snaps and opportunities to savour each one. It is only at the very end I could detect a bit of grittiness. Actually ‘grit might be too strong a word for it; more like a detection of cocoa dust which can be a good or bad thing depending on your preferences.
Most chefs and Dark Side Devotees agree that Lindt 70% is THE standard by which the other blocks aspire to, but I was curious to see how it stood up in comparison when three others were tried alongside it. It contains 40 grams of fat per 100g of which 24 grams is saturated and has 28 grams of sugar. It also has ‘natural bourbon vanilla beans’ rather than ‘extract’ (in G&B) or ‘flavours’ (Nestle), so maybe that explains the general preference for this one.
On tasting it I was again blown away by how different it tastes to the first two. The blurb on the back says that it’s ‘delicately fragrant…strong but not too intense cocoa flavour’ which I definitely agree with, but what first hit me is the fruitiness. That’s right – it does sound a bit ‘precious’ but there is a tangy fruit and coffee mix that danced on my taste buds. Maybe it’s just the vanilla working its magic but when combined with the smooth texture it certainly deserves its respected reputation.
Finally the Cadbury Old Gold 70%. Despite being reduced in size since their cardboard packaging revamp, it’s still by far the thickest and presents the hardest challenge to snap. It has 40.9 grams of fat per 100g of which 25.6 grams is saturated and 27.7 grams of sugar. As with Green and Black’s, they’ve added ‘milk solids’ as the final ingredient….. why?
I shouldn’t have been surprised but again I was at how vastly dissimilar the taste of this was to the others. Cadbury has a very smoky flavour not encountered in the others, with a toasted almond or cashew undertone. Very nice. The only downside was that it felt a bit greasy, but maybe that was due to the milk solids? As I inspected the back of the box a bit more closely, it was evident that a sticker had been put over the original list of ingredients, so maybe it’s a temporary replacement for the palm oil? Do they need either in a 70% block?
So GoneChocco readers, what do you think?
One thing to note is that Green & Black’s has been owned by Cadbury for some time now which probably explains the use of Milk solids in both – but not why they would be there in the first place. Very strange for a 70% to contain milk product.
You’re right, San, the erm, ‘Man’ – I didn’t put that in the review and have been hoping that G&Bs will be allowed to get on with things and use whatever ingredients they choose to. But it is strange for 70% to have milk, isn’t it?
I don’t see why milk is needed, except perhaps as a filler (to bulk it out), or perhaps to moderate / control the flavour a bit the way you can use cream in cooking.
Lindt for me is the “gold standard” by which others are measured. For a value block, the Club or Old Gold are not bad though and make a nice change.
The other Club varieties with the various flavours are typically only about 40% to 45% cocoa, which seems odd and unneccessary, and they melt away very quickly – result perhaps of the palm/butter/grease-of-the-day used to make them a whole lot softer. Seems a shame.
I’m a milk chocolate person, very rarely going over to the dark side, but I do like the Lindt one on occasion, and I also like Nestle dark peppermint, especially chopped up and stirred into icecream at christmas. It’s something my dad used to do, with the Nestle Club, he’d grate it and mix it into the tub of vanilla icecream as a treat for me, then he’d eat the rest.
This comment box loaded half over Ashleigh’s comment, so I couldn’t read it all………..
personally i go to DJ’s food hall and purchase a piece of Lindt couviture (you know what i mean the real stuff). dark is always the preference of the day and let melt on the tongue. mmmmmmmm that thick rich bitter bliss.
First off, Kath, love the new website! Wonderful to see you striking out on yoru own and giving us a true Aussie chocolate blog for once!
If you investigate the G&B website, or email them directly, it actually turns out that the “whole milk powder” is not an actual ingredient in the chocolate, but is something they’ve decided to put on the package because the dark chocolate bars are made on the same line as the milk chocolates, so they can’t guarantee no cross-contamination takes place. (I know all this because I’m lactose intolerant so wanted to know what was going on when teh packaging changed.)
Although I tend towards super dark chocolates in my preferences, I’ve actually been really unimpressed with the 70% bars available in Australia. I really dislike both the Lindt 70% and G&B 70%, precisely because I find them too fruity and sour. I adore the Lindt 85% though, for its earthiness! I recommend you try the Cocolo 70%, as I find that quite enjoyable. But when it comes to Lindt, its either the 70% or the buttery sweet 47% Excellence range for me!
Still, didn’t know Nestle and Cadbury had come out with 70% – thanks for the head’s up, Kath
Ashleigh, it’s really only been fairly recently here in Australia that ‘dark’ has come to mean ‘70%’ for a lot of us – there are still bars that claim to be ‘dark’ at a mere 40%, and varieties such as Club and Old Gold hover around the 50% mark and go a fair way towards introducing milk lovers to the darker side. I myself have to be ‘in the mood’ for 70% but can quite happily scoff 45-65% without pausing for breath (which isn’t a good thing)
River, I’m going to try grating some chocolate into icecream but might not wait until Christmas to do it!
Heather the Lindt couverture is about 70% as well, it’s just preferred by chefs and chocolatiers for its ease in melting and ability to coat stuff like meringues, ganaches and nougats really well. Just shows that you have very good taste.
Thanks Hannah – way to go for contacting G&B – usually such companies cover concerns like that with ‘processed on machinery that has also processed nuts or lactose’ so to include it as the final ingredient makes it seem like it’s an added ingredient, if you know what I mean. Thanks for clarifying that for us.
Yeah – I’m mildly lactose intolerant too – so my consumption of the milk chocolate is pretty small – though I do find the amount of lactose in many processed things seems (SEEMS) small.
A Lindt 70% can disappear very quickly round my house. I find the 85% takes a bit longer to go, its a slower thing to eat and I need less of it in a single go. The Lindt 99% is a MAJOR challenge. Managing more than a tiny amount at a time is hard work, and the nuclear-bomb-proof packaging serves as something of a warning sign
It’s funny that this should come up as I was just chatting with mum yesterday about how I was really craving some 70% at that moment.
I personally love the G&B 70% best. I keep a small container full in my drawer at work. It’s good at those ’stressy’ moments just to let a piece melt slowly away on the tongue. Instant pick-me-up!