Lindt Excellence: White (a touch of vanilla)

Product name: Lindt Excellence: White (a touch of vanilla)
Purchase details: £1.85 for a 100g bar or two for £3.00 (tesco.com)
Calories: 569 per bar
Country of origin: France 

I must confess that I only really bought this bar of Lindt Excellence: White (a touch of vanilla) as part of the offer I bought the heavenly crème brûlée bar on. However, I did also realise that I had no recollection of ever having had this ‘extra fine white chocolate with natural Madagascan vanilla aroma’ before, so I was intrigued to see how it compared to the Choceur Smooth White bar that I love so much, particularly as Lindt is so well known for its quality. 

This Lindt & Sprüngli offering was larger and flatter than other bars and came in a wrapper with a pale yellow colour scheme. The cardboard contained an illustration of the simple-looking chocolate, as well as vanilla pods, but there was no nutritional information provided so I obtained this from Lindt's website.  

The reality of the chocolate was much like the wrapper suggested, with 10 large but basic squares containing the Lindt logo and a few diagonal lines for decoration. Quite unusually, I thought, its colour was such a pale shade of yellow that it wasn’t that far off pure white. 

The chocolate was described as ‘a deliciously smooth and creamy white chocolate blended with a hint of Madagascan vanilla aroma’ and I thought it was interesting that this vanilla was only mentioned as a scent rather than a flavour. As a result, though, I was a little disappointed with the end result as I can’t say I found this element prominent at all. However, there was a subtle white chocolate smell which was still pleasant. 

Thankfully, the white chocolate’s taste was much stronger, providing a far-reaching sweet and milky flavour that wasn’t too sugary and actually did taste a little of vanilla! It was delicious. 

The texture was very good too. It had a thick, smooth melt that allowed the chocolate to cream on the tongue and, as a result, more flavour was released. The downside of this was the design of the bar meant the squares were too large to fit comfortably in the mouth and so it was easier said than done to fully appreciate this experience. 

Thankfully, the chocolate was still tasty, although not as powerful, when chewing, and I found it actually felt quite moist. Furthermore, the rigidity of the chocolate meant that, despite its shallowness, it managed to still feel chunky. 

You may be surprised that this Lindt Excellence: White (a touch of vanilla) didn’t score quite as highly as Aldi’s Choceur Smooth White – I certainly was. However, I must emphasise that this product did still taste great and that, if the squares were a little smaller and, perhaps, deeper, this would have allowed the flavour to be a little more far-reaching. As a result, I would highly recommend both bars. 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.75/10