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Austrian chocolate reviews

This page is one of a series of international chocolate reviews.

A. Yogurette

These are small individually wrapped chocolate bars filled with white fondant and a pinkish streak of strawberry (5.5%). They smell very attractive, like the strawberry sweet in Roses that never lasts long, and are generally excellent. It's a pity Lucy and Pierre ate more than half of them before I got them, but I can see why.

B. Milka Milkinis Schoko-Drops

This box pops out a nifty dispensing spout which looks more suitable for washing powder. Milkinis come in the two Milka brand colours, white and pale purple, and are very like Smarties — just slightly larger and sweeter and with a calcium health boast. They're agreeably crunchy, and the centre is a combination of chocolate and "Milchcreme" (akin to the white stuff in Kinder Eggs).

C. Manner Nuss-Würfel

Milk chocolate with hazelnut cream filling.

Nine of these "nut cubes" (or dice, if you credit Lucy's poor translation) are arranged in a 3×3 pattern, sliding-block puzzle style, in a nice presentation box. They smell amazing: rich and buttery with hints of cocoa. Lucy didn't like the minor grittiness of the crushed nuts, but I think it enhances the otherwise smooth texture.

D. Tobago

A slim and distinguished-looking bar of extremely dark chocolate (cocoa solids 75% minimum). Quite bitter, of course, but wonderful in small doses.

E. Manja

Something very squishy and melted in thin gold foil. "It's horrible," Lucy warns me. Well, it smells okay; rather like peanuts, I think to myself. Are there peanuts in it? I can't tell. The taste is weird and a bit unpleasant, reminding me of cookie dough somehow. I don't like the oozy texture and it's not really worth trying to peel off the rest of the foil.

F. Kokos-Riegel

If my half-baked German serves me, there are some funny health slogans on this wrapper: "give your body the best" and so on. It's a chocolate bar. Having coconut in it doesn't make it automatically healthy. The bar is short and lumpy, with a moist coconut filling like Bounty. The centre is stickier and stodgier than that — I thought of Thai rice — but it tastes fine.

G. Milka M-joy Whole Hazelnuts

This kind of glossy, airtight plastic wrapper always promises good things. Here we have some good, unpretentious chocolate studded with whole hazelnuts. What else did you expect? The only mystery is why it says Whole Hazelnuts in English (and only in English) when everything else on the wrapper is in German, Czech, and Slovak.

H. Reinbeißen, Burschen!

Is this a test of some kind? It's a Mars bar, and putting a silly phrase on it ("Tuck in, lads!") certainly doesn't change that, nor am I impressed by the "limited edition" claim when it's only the packaging that is different. Do people collect these?

I. Amicelli

Thin sticks, the girth of a little finger, individually wrapped inside an appealing hexagonal cylinder that dispenses them from its tearable centre like a tissue box. The sticks are delicious crisp wafer with a soft centre, hazelnut truffle or suchlike, and chocolate coating. Really good.

J. Bensdorp Gold Trüffelcreme

A sweet-smelling bar, very flat, with a glorious truffle centre — Michael Winner doesn't mind me borrowing his adjectives — so rich that it almost seems to have a hint of liqueur. It tastes as divine as the melting balls of filling on the wrapper might lead one to imagine. Vanessa opted for a quail sorbet with boysenberries, which was simply historic.

K. Ferrero Giotto

A frustratingly crumbly product. To make things worse, my sample had melted and re-solidified and kept leprously shedding bits when I touched it, so I had gobble it from the packet to avoid making a mess. As a result, I couldn't really tell what it was. Was chocolate involved? If so, only white chocolate and not much of it. I believe it was mostly hazelnuts, and it tasted like muesli.