Awhile ago Cybele over at Candyblog reviewed some world class chocolate from Domori Cru, and mentioned that she had put it off for so long because she was afraid of it skewing her view on more ordinary chocolate. That has been the case for me since I got these bars back in late May, but it got to a point where I had to review them otherwise they’d start to lose their quality, and so here is the first in my series of expensive, posh chocolate.

Valrhona is a French chocolate manufacturer who also maintains the École du Grand Chocolat, a school for professional chefs with a focus on chocolate-based dishes. Valrhona focuses on top quality luxury bars marketed for professional as well as private consumption. They are also the only company in the world that produces vintage chocolate made from beans of a single year’s harvest from a specific plantation. They have plantations in Madagascar, Trinidad and Venezuela, and this bar is from Madagascar.

This milk chocolate bar contains 33% cocoa solids, it’s described as a “light brown colour with bronze tints, and expresses balance of acidulous notes, highly characteristic with a milky taste and strong caramel notes.” It also won the Gold Award at the Guild of Fine Foods in 2007. So, enough blurb and bigging up, let’s do this.

The cardboard box is nice and pretty, a dark theme with a little bit of colour, it’s quite attractive. The ingredients are translated approximately one million times on the back, and the bar weighs in at 75g. Opening the box reveals the gold foil wrapper, it all seems ok so far. Opening the wrapper shows that this bar looks exactly like the Nestlé Heaven bars, like, exactly the same, only with “Valrhona” printed on the blocks, of which there are ten.

The bar smells milky, rather than creamy. There are hints of caramel but I was looking for them so I’m not too trusting of my senses at the moment. The pieces are solid milk chocolate, not a hint of graininess. Popping a piece in my mouth and letting it melt then, first off was the creamy milk chocolate, from the beginning it was delicious, something which not every bar has. The caramel then comes through again, it definitely is there. The creaminess fades a little while more of an actual chocolate flavour comes through, and as the bar finally melts completely, the creamy flavour comes back once more.

At £2.75 a bar, this is something to be savoured, and it’s worth savouring. This is a deep, flavoursome milk chocolate bar, and it proves that a bar doesn’t have to have 80% cocoa solids to have deep flavours to it. Quite possibly the best milk chocolate bar I’ve ever had, I’m thoroughly impressed, and I assure you that considering the price I paid for this, I would tell you if I wasn’t. If you have the money to spare and want to try a real award winning bar, look no further.