Mozart Chocolade Classic Milk (Reber)

Brand: Reber

Calories: 570 a bar

Calories per gram: 5.7 (eek)
Price: $5.99
Where I found it: University of... alright, I think you can guess where by now

Where you can find it: They seem to be everywhere on the internet, but Amazon's pretty reliable

*low whistle* This is a gorgeous, gorgeous box, folks.  Others may find it granny-ish and therefore repel them, but I'm a band geek and this classic, ornate design appealed to me.  Not only that, it somehow had ties to a long-deceased Austrian composer, whose a handful of horn concertos out of his hundreds of works I truly appreciate! (I'm not a big Mozart fan--Mahler, baby.  MAHLER.)

It makes me wonder if there was ever a Mahler bar to be created, its taste would be some sort of classy insanity.  Shards of spice stabbing you from all directions, with a gentle, sweet rush of milk, and triumphant rays of honey and candied ginger, and yet the entire experience would have a shroud of dark, mysterious bitterness.  That would taste awful but, at the same time, AWESOME.

Ahem, to this bar!  I opened it up and, woow.  This is some classy shiz.

I like how in the corner of the box, it makes sure to point out: "freshly sealed in gold foil".  But, really--it feels cheap.  Yes, it's gold foil, but also, why on Earth did they have to include that?  Now at this point I hoped it wasn't some downgraded tourist consumer fare, but only taste can come down to that.

I opened the foil, and it was pleasant that it didn't have to be ripped.  The seal opened up easily and it revealed the pieces of chocolate.

 

Splendid!  I can eat chocolate and marzipan and Mozart's head!   While I was impressed with the detailed engraving, I was not so with the speckles on the chocolate.  I'm not an expert, but it leads me to believe the chocolate isn't smooth, and in a way, shouted, "I'm factory made!  Look at me!"

The smell of this bar is incredibly, incredibly... sweet.  It also smelled like creamy ice cream!  But this sweetness had a character that I couldn't explain--it was a sort of artificial strawberry with a nutty hint, and at the same time, buttery.  Then I realized if I took in the smell a bit longer, it was pistachio, and that amazed me!  I've eaten pistachios and I know what they smelled like, but wow--this was some really strong pistachio.  I can't tell if the smell was very strong pistachio or just artificial pistachio, but looking at the ingredients:

Sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk power, hazelnuts, almonds, cocoa mass, contains 2% or less of: cream powder, water, butterfat, sorbitol, invert sugar syrup, pistachio kernels, invertase, soya lecithin, flavouring (wtf?), rum, alcohol.

It was the real deal.  Perhaps the extremely strong sweetness scent came from sorbitol and sugar syrup and rum.  It seems German chocolates enjoy their sugar.

With the smell, I was anticipating favorably of the taste!  I took a bite of a piece.

Unlike the picture, there was no gooey, oozing hazelnut praline, and the pistachio marzipan wasn't neon green (which is a good thing).  Similar to the other German chocolates I reviewed on MMM, CARBS, though, SUGAR!  SUGAR!  It's nearly as much or perhaps more sugary than the Casali Schoko-Orangen, but somehow I didn't mind so much, since there was quite a few dimensions to a piece of this bar.

The pistachio is certainly, absolutely, overpowering.  And again, I can't even tell if it was the taste of extremely strong pistachio, or the molasses of the rum, or what, but it was prominent in every single bite of this bar.  I've never drunk rum (I'm under 21), so perhaps I'll never know.  But as I said before, it tasted like an extremely sweet fruity flavor--yes, that was what I was thinking of the entire time, fruity fruity fruity, and smelled as such--and then the milk chocolate fought to stay on.

I feel the milk chocolate is a sad underdog of this bar, because it was damn tasty.  It was smooth, had a soft bite, and had a fatty, rich, milky body, but unfortunately, lost in the battles of the crazy nutty, alcohol-y jungles of this bar.  If the milk chocolate had a stronger role, I would have probably devoured all 15 pieces of the cartridge (and not regret it as I sweat buckets over the elliptical).

As if the strong pistachio and substantial milk chocolate were not enough--wait, there's more!  There is hazelnut praline with almonds, and, my goodness.  If only each of these were made with the rich milk chocolate!  If you pushed aside the brute flavor of the rum-pistachio-whatever it is, you could taste the hazelnut and almond mingling subtly with each other.  It's very, very subtle, but delicious once you find it.

Regardless of Mozart Chocolade pushing its boundaries onto saccharin, I couldn't eat just one piece, and threw all abandon out the window, and consumed three.  I blame the butterfat.