Ritter Sport Espresso

Product name: Ritter Sport Espresso
Purchase details: £0.75 for a 100g bar (99p Stores)

Calories: 567 per bar
Country of origin: Germany

As much I don’t like to drink coffee, I love it in chocolate and cake, so I was delighted to find this absolute bargain bar of Ritter Sport Espresso.

Coming in a rich dark brown wrapper with images of chocolate and coffee, it was made ‘with robust Arabica coffee’ which, I’ve got to admit, meant nothing to me! The ‘milk chocolate with a coffee cream (45%) filling’ sounded a lot more up my street, though. There was no nutritional information provided but, thankfully, I was able to obtain this from Ritter Sport's website.

The bar had a very similar appearance to the Kakao-Mousse but it was split into 16 smaller squares instead of nine larger ones. The filling did look mousse-like, though, and this caused the bar to break apart softly too. It was also considerably darker than the chocolate shell despite the wrapper giving the opposite impression.

On peeling open the packaging, I was greeted with a scent that was just like opening a jar of instant coffee – it was very strong (I couldn’t smell the chocolate over it) but didn’t give me the headache that fresh coffee does.

The bar contained 4% espresso powder and I couldn’t believe how strong the coffee flavour actually was. I’ve tasted the odd granule here and there (as you do) and it tasted exactly like that. However, the chocolate (containing a minimum of 30% cocoa solids and 18% milk solids) meant there was no intense bitterness like in a real cup of coffee.

Texturally, the chocolate had an incredibly thick but soft melt that needed the tongue to spring into action in order to get each square to completely disappear. Eating the bar in this way allowed the almost dirty flavour to be eased into, having worked through the creamy and slightly sweet chocolate. Alternatively, chewing the bar weakened the power of the coffee, allowing the chocolate flavour to come out a little more.

No one could claim that this bar lacked flavour but, for me, it wasn’t my favourite kind. Its ‘coffeeness’ was a lot stronger than your average assortment box coffee creams but, equally, it was far better quality. I definitely liked this Ritter Sport Espresso but the emphasis was very much on the coffee rather than the chocolate and I would have preferred it to be the other way around.

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