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Italian chocolate reviews

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

A. La Perla di Torino Cioccolato Fondente Extra con Peperoncino Red Chilli

Pure extra bitter chocolate with chilli.

Quite a hefty bar, weighing in at 100g, but still less of a mouthful than its name. Opening the red metallic foil reveals a very dark bar (56% cocoa) in five superlatively large segments — even for my Creme Egg black hole of a mouth — which, in a curious nod to Engrish, spell out B-L-O-C-K. I can't smell or taste the chilli at first, but it soon hits the back of the throat, pungent and spicy. Quality stuff, though I might prefer fractionally sweeter chocolate.

B. Bacetti Perugina

Plain chocolate with hazelnut filling.

This pretty blue box conjures up visions of sleighs in the snow. Each bacetto (little kiss) is wrapped in silver foil and shaped like an aeroplane's nose cone. Underneath dark and barely bitter chocolate, the projecting lump on top is found to be a whole hazelnut, while the rest of the filling is hazelnut praline. One of the few sweets where dark chocolate really does work better than milk.

C. Novi Novipiù

"Con morbido ripieno," it says. Are there corpses in it, ripe with decay? It looks tempting enough from the wrapper: a square bar like Ritter Sport with something soft, toffee perhaps, oozing from inside. It's dark chocolate again, and not very nice dark chocolate: rather bitter and chalky and somehow old-tasting, like chocolate from a deceased relative's attic. The filling, which is meant to be hazelnut, is also dryish and solid for all its softness, nothing like the shiny goodness that spilled out in the picture. The expiry date looks okay, but I'll pass.

D. Alpenliebe Espresso

I get a nasty surprise as I reach for my first Espresso and bite without looking. I was expecting the classic chocolate-coated coffee bean, but it's actually a hard, smooth lozenge that shatters between my teeth. The genuine coffee taste is strong and overpowering. I study the next lozenge rather more closely: its sickly greyish-brown sheen, a far cry from the rich russet glow on the packet, does little to improve these caffeinated Werther's Originals. Just one gave me the rancid coffee breath of four English teachers.

E. Ferrero Garden

We've all heard of Ferrero Rocher, but what kind of ambassador would impress his guests with "Ferrero Garden"? Probably a homeless one, with imaginary guests, who makes them himself out of grass and dandelions and washes them down with White Lightning. These are in fact like their cousin Rocher (and haven't they both grown?) but based around white chocolate and pistachio. The smell isn't very appealing, bland and somehow beige, and the gooey centre tastes much more like hateful marzipan than pistachio.

F. Tronky

Meet Tronky. He's a wafer shaped like an elongated egg-box and filled with a thick, gloopy hazelnut chocolate with something of the texture of butter icing. The wafer tastes exactly like an ice-cream cone, which is a bit odd without ice-cream. It has that soft yet crispy texture, too, unlike the hard cylindrical wafer I would more commonly associate with chocolate. Uncompromisingly dry: not the snack for a hot summer day.