Review: Whittaker’s Artisan Collection: Marlborough Sea Salt & Caramel and Waikato Grown Aromatic Oolong Tea

Look at this gorgeous pair... These chocolates were a surprise gift from dear friends from their holiday to New Zealand. How thoughtful was that? I am very lucky to have such wonderful friends - and not just because they send me chocolate. ;)

The wrappings are among the most beautiful chocolate wrappings I have ever seen. They’re very elegant yet a bit exotic with their delicious colours and pretty patterns. And they come from New Zealand! They’re definitely something of a rarity, a special treat that you can’t get anywhere in Finland.

The darker chocolate has a cocoa content of 50 %. The first thing I noticed was the scent. It is strange – not unpleasant by any means, but it took me a while to find a word for it. When I did, that word was flowery! Yes, I think I can smell flowers here. My daughter distinguished orange, and, after hearing that, my DH found it there too.

This chocolate, however, contains neither flowers nor orange but tea, oolong tea. I’ve never tried chocolate with tea before, so this was an interesting experience. I’m not a tea drinker (I kept trying, but I just couldn’t bring myself to like the taste so much as to actually drink tea for enjoyment), but I have to say that I can't taste the tea here - or if I do, it doesn't resemble the aroma that I associate with tea. The dark chocolate is fairly mild – definitely not bitter – and very smooth, and it has to be the tea that gives it a lovely, flowery yet delicate extra aroma. It is unlike any other chocolate I’ve tasted before... for some reason, it reminds me of honey, the kind where you can almost taste flowers and the sun!

The milk chocolate comes with caramel and sea salt – my very favourite combination! The scent is very mellow; I could only distinguish the sweet aroma of milk chocolate.

The milk chocolate is smooth and sweet but not overly sugary – it has a fairly mild taste, but the additions make up for that. The caramel brittle is nice and crunchy, not too hard, and has that lovely, toasted burnt sugar flavour. The salt granules enhance the flavours of chocolate and caramel (now I must brag a little... as we tasted these chocolates, my seven-year-old daughter expertly commented that the salt was delicious and that it enhances the flavour of chocolate. She’s been paying attention! :D). Unlike most chocolates with sea salt where you can find just a few small salt granules, this one is fairly generous with salt, and I like that! I could get addicted...

Overall, I liked both of these: the darker version with tea, because it was definitely different and new, and the milk chocolate because it combined my favourite flavours - and did it beautifully.