Artisan du Chocolat are a London based, artisan chocolate company. Using fresh cream, herbs and spices, they recommend you eat their products within 2 weeks of purchase so I had to get this down my neck pretty quickly. At £9 for this 12 piece box it doesn’t come cheaply either.

The couture box comes inspired by Japan, which is where this company also does a lot of business. It opens up like a book and even has a little peg thing that allows it to open and close very nicely. They produce 45 flavours for this type of box, and we have 12 of them here.

The chocolates themselves are tiny, barely bitesize. They’re all handcrafted and painted and look amazing. When I pulled them out of the box there were grease marks on the bottom of the box, like a pack of fresh doughnuts leaving their mark on a paper bag. It was a little odd, not necessarily bad, but surprising.

The chocolates were all incredibly soft and melty, with a chocolate shell and then a ganache centre, there were some really floral and herby flavours. One tasted like liquorice, one was just like regular milk chocolate. Another tasted like banana (listed on the site as banana and thyme), and then there were ones I couldn’t guess at all. The website also lists a few other flavours such as tonka beans, chestnut tree honey and…tobacco. Tobacco flavoured chocolate, which is actually never delivered unless you specially request it (I didn’t).

They don’t tell you which flavours are which, is this good or bad? I think it’s good, it has an interesting mystery to it, though it would be nice if they had something in there to let me know afterwards, to see if I was right or not. Overall these were delicious, some were very chocolatey and buttery, others focussed much more on herbs and spices. They were all ganache filled except for one which was more of a hazelnut praline and another which had a fruity jelly inside. I’d balk a little at the £9 pricetag for these, as I actually excepted them to be bigger than what they ended up being, but as a gift I think these would go down brilliantly well. Fresh, unusual ingredients with some amazing flavours here and wonderfully presented, worth a try if you have the money to spare.