Dubble (milk chocolate)

Product name: Dubble (milk chocolate)
Purchase details: £0.65 for a 33g bar (Oxfam)
Calories: 175 per bar
Country of origin: Germany

I remember being pretty excited when Dubble bars were released back in the year 2000. They came in purple wrappers at the time and, for a couple of years, I had at least one every month. It’s now been a long time since my last one but, since I’d never got around to unsubscribing from their mailing list, I was saddened to receive an e-mail a few weeks ago to say that production was stopping at the end of May 2014. I hoped I’d be able to take a trip down memory lane before it was too late and, thankfully, I did find them still on sale in Oxfam in the last two weeks.

Now packaged in a brown wrapper with ‘raining’ rice cereal, the Dubble was always more about the ethics than the product. Made by Divine Chocolate, it was Fairtrade (using Ghanaian cocoa), and £0.02 from every bar went to Comic Relief. I always did enjoy the ‘chunky milk chocolate with a crispy rice crunch’, though, so the fact it was ‘Dubbly good!’ due to endorsing ‘fair play for cocoa growers’ was a bonus.

The bar was quite slim and was split into two pretty plain segments – they were simply decorated with the two ‘B’s that formed the logo and, I don’t know why, but their positioning somehow reminded me of comedy and tragedy masks! Whilst the upper layer of the bar appeared to consist entirely of the chocolate that contained a minimum of 27% cocoa solids and 21% milk solids, the base had a sprinkling of ‘honey rice crisps’ (6%). I’d never picked up on this honey element before so I was interested to see what effect it had.

I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone else but I’d describe the chocolate scent that the bar emitted as ‘high-pitched’. The aroma was also reflected in the taste which had a good balance of sweetness, cocoa and milk. It turned out the honey’s flavour wasn’t noticeable but it possibly did contribute to the nice level of sweetness within the decent chocolate flavour.

The angular shape and rough base of the bar made it uncomfortable to suck on but I found the chocolate didn’t really melt anyway. However, it did have a nice chew to it, and I enjoyed the sensation of biting through the pure chocolate before reaching the slightly crispy rice. I say ‘slightly crispy’ because I actually found the cereal’s texture to be quite chewy and I kept thinking it was popping candy without the crackling aftermath! I figured this texture was down to a stickiness added by the honey.

I couldn’t end this review without mentioning the Nestlé Crunch bar since, in terms of the physical product, they were very similar on paper. For ethical reasons, I so much wanted to prefer the Dubble but, for some reason, with this bar I found the rice somehow detracted from what was otherwise a delicious bar of chocolate. I guess it would have been unwise to form too strong an attachment at this stage anyway.

Farewell, Dubble, it was a good 14 years.

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.13/10