Ritter Sport Gebrannte Mandel

Product name: Ritter Sport Gebrannte Mandel
Purchase details: £1.75 for a 100g bar (monstersweets.co.uk)
Calories: 133 per four square portion (532 per bar)
Country of origin: Germany 

Christmas is coming! So it would be rude not to try the Ritter Sport limited edition bars for Winter 2013, right? Good, I’m glad we agree...

This review is for the Gebrannte Mandel variety or, in English, ‘caramelised almonds’. Unusually, I struggled to find any English-written information on this product, so all I had to go on was the Monster Sweets description which was ‘classic milk chocolate and delicious sugar roasted almonds’.

The Winter 2013 Ritter Sport bars all have a snowman on the wrapper which I thought was very cute and I loved how it was made of squares rather than balls to reflect the shape of the chocolate. This Gebrannte Mandel version was represented by the colour green and the wrapper also contained a picture of the chocolate as well as some yummy-looking caramelised nuts. I’ve always thought there was something special about coated nuts so these looked very appealing.

The bar was divided into 16 squares and it was possible to see flecks of nut through the chocolate’s surface. The base of the bar was also slightly bumpy but not majorly so. The bar had a hard snap to it when breaking it apart and, on doing so, it was clear that there were a lot of nuts inside. It also appeared that the moulded chocolate at the top of the bar had been added afterwards as there seemed to be two distinct layers.

This product had a general chocolate smell with a hint of almond and its nutty taste was immediately obvious as soon as the chocolate made contact with the tongue. Due to the caramelisation, there was a slightly burnt taste to it, which was nice, and I just adored how strong the caramelised aspect of it was. Despite the nuttiness, the chocolate’s milky flavour was still very evident and tasted as rich as ever.

This chocolate was great when left to melt as the nuts seemed to form a cluster at the end of each square which were a joy to munch on after the chocolate had melted. They were fantastically crunchy and had an obvious sugar coating which was, understandably, sweet but didn’t take away from the natural nutty flavour. I found the bar was best enjoyed when allowing it to partially melt as this meant the two elements could be enjoyed separately without hurting the mouth by allowing the nuts to get too rough. I can’t pretend that this wasn’t slightly hard work but it made the product feel like two treats instead of one.

As enjoyable as the chocolate and nuts were apart, they tasted great together too. When chewing a whole square, the nuts weren’t quite as flavourful, but they did add a kind of syrupy sweetness to the flavour which isn’t normally a feature in chocolate, and this was particularly noticeable at the back of the throat.

I do feel that there are a lot of nut-containing chocolate products on the market and, as a result, the concept isn’t generally a very exciting one these days. However, the fact that these almonds had been toasted in sugar added something a bit different, and I loved it! 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.63/10