Nestle Noir Cherry

I love cherries, and I loooove dark chocolate, so I thought this chocolate would be right for me... not quite. It was okay and if it crossed my path again I would probably eat it, but it was not as good as I had thought it would be. There seemed to be very few cherry pieces in the bar, and they didn't really taste "right"...

I say you are better off to get dried cherries and some nice dark chocolate and nibble them together for the best chocolate cherry combo.

Yuuuuuum! I am a fan of dark chocolate so I was really excited to receive this product! I've got to say that this is some of the best chocolate I've ever tasted. I loved the dried cherry and chocolate combination. I even shared it with some people (people who like and dislike dark chocolate) and this was a winner. The cherry taste almost eliminates the dark chocolate bitterness/bite that we usually experience when eating dark chocolate. I would seriously recommend this chocolate and I will go buy myself this flavour next time I see it in the grocery store! Well worth every penny!

Of the four Nestle Noir chocolate bars that I sampled, I was expecting this to be my least favourite because I am not generally a fan of cherries or chocolate covered cherries. There's something about the goeey texture of chocolate covered cherries that turns me off and reminds me of the liquid medicine I had to take for colds as a child. (It's not a surprise that I have avoided cherry-flavoured anything since childhood.) I was skeptical about whether I would like this, but I was pleasantly surprised. Instead of the soft maraschino cherries I was expecting, Nestle opted to use small bits of chewy, dried cherry. It was a very good complement to the slight bitterness of dark chocolate. While this isn't my favourite of the group, I found myself unexpectedly enjoying the Nestle Noir Cherry.

To me there really was nothing remarkable about this bar. It was good. It was tasty. I'd eat it again. But its nothing I'd crave or desire much. The chocolate was good. But I felt the texture of the cherries interrupted the pleasurable chocolate. Not my favorite, but I'd definitely eat it again.

When I tried this bar for the first time, I wasn't too fond of it. I thought the cherry bits overpowered the taste of the dark chocolate. The second time I had some, I really enjoyed it. I'm a fan of chocolate covered cherries, but sometimes they can be far too sweet. I found the cherry pieces in this bar to be a little sour, which was a nice change and actually went well with the dark chocolate. I would probably pick up this bar, if the caramel wasn't available.

I really do not like traditional chocolate covered cherries. Mostly because the cherry is usually floating in the red gooey mess. So this is a welcome change. I liked the chewiness of the cherries while the bitter/sweet chocoalate melted on my tongue. I think this is a great dark chocolate change from the usually overly sweet bars on the market!

This is the first of the 4 Nestle Noir I've sampled and now I can't wait to try the other 3!

I normally prefer milk chocolate to dark, but this had a lovely rich taste and was not too sweet. The addition of cherry added a wonderful tart complexity and overall, I think the combination worked very well.

As the bar is huge and quite rich to eat at one sitting, I'm pondering culinary possibilities for this product and I think the following would be fantastic;
-grated and added to steamed milk for a delicious hot chocolate
-grated (or just smashed up) and added to any brownie recipe
-grated and melted with hot cream for a chocolate fondue

I really liked this chocoalte bar. It think the cherry bits added a great flavor to the chocolate and gave a slightly sweeter taste to the intensity of the chocolate. Although I expected a cherry flavor from the cherry bits, I did not expect the cherry bits to be chewy - an added surprise. I really enjoyed munching on those bits of cherry.

I originally wanted to say that the pieces of cherry could have been larger, but then the chocolate would have been overwhelmed by the cherry flavor and I don't think that's what Nestle's intention was. I think they accomplished exactly what they set out to do - add a bit of flavor and texture to a delicious chocolate bar for those who want a little something different for a change.

This bar quickly became a favorite of mine.

Our taste testers were:
Rachel: 32 year old woman, extreme chocolate lover
Jeff: 31 year old man, enjoys chocolate, picky eater
Kelly: 32 year old female
Ben: 30 year old male
Alice: 10 year old girl, part time host of online cooking show, enjoys chocolate

Each taste tester tried each bar, and rated it on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best chocolate ever, and 1 being “yucky”. As a benchmark, we rated a plain Hershey bar and a Nestle Crunch bar as 8 on the scale. All of the bars were large, 100g compared to the 43 g of a “plain, old” Hershey bar. The bars were split into 10 squares, wrapped in gold foil (reminiscent of a Wonka Golden Ticket), and placed in a cardboard outer wrapper with graphics and information geared toward a sophisticated chocolate eater. The cardboard packaging even had instructions for how to open it!

After a bit of quick research, I read that in the April 2007 edition of “Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry”, a research team from the Nestlé Research Center (Lausanne, Switzerland) reported on Polyphenols. They claim these “powerful antioxidants” positively affect arterial function, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, insulin sensitivity and oxidative stress. The packaging says it each bar is “a good source of magnesium which helps build strong bones” and “contains 300 mg of Polyphenols per serving.”

What’s really going to sell chocolate, though, is taste.

The Cerise is dark chocolate with cherry flavored pieces. Rachel is not a fan of cherry, and at first did not want to try this flavor. Kelly said she is not a big fan of fruit mixed with chocolate. We can happily say that instead of the cherry being a thick, oozing filling, as is often the case with candy, the cherry was in small bits, about the size of Nerds candy, but softer. It is 64% cocoa solids. The ingredients do list cherries, as well as apple and pineapple, surprisingly. Alice rated the cherry bar a 5.5, Jeff gave it a 4 and Rachel & Kelly gave it a 6. Ben thought the cherry flavor got a bit lost, but gave it a 7. We noted that the cherry bar had no after taste.

In the end, Rachel enjoyed the cherry that she didn’t even want to try – due to the blend of sweet fruit flavor with semi-dark chocolate.

Of the 4 new Nestle Noir bars, this one was my least favourite. The idea of chocolate and cherry is a good one in theory, but frankly if I have a craving for chocolate covered cherries I'm going to go out and get chocolate covered cherries! The bar was ok, but not fantastic. I wouldn't buy it.