Lindt Excellence

The legends preceded it: chocolate so dark it ceased to taste like chocolate. Chocolate so intense it required cautionary statements. Chocolate so fine it cost £75 per kilo.

Such purity is exceptionally rare. A normal Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bar is rumoured to contain about 11% cocoa. The “Dark” chocolate Dairy Milk bar is just 40% cocoa. Connoisseurs must look to a more exotic manufacturer for their intense cocoa hit.

The Lindt Excellence line of fine chocolate bars is widely available in the UK. Dark chocolate versions with 85% cocoa can be found with relative ease at chains as plebeian as ASDA. Such ubiquity is not shared by the 99% bar. For it, one must travel to a Lindt chocolate shop or buy online.

At the shop, I was greeted by two pleasant-enough young women offering free chocolate samples to browsers. My goal clear, I declined their truffles and proceeded straight to the chocolate bar section. There, on the wall, I saw it: a 99%-pure bar of cocoa. One of the saleswomen regarded my choice with concern. She made sure that I knew what I was getting into, that I knew I should enjoy the bar slowly, at home, with proper reverence and plenty of water. Undeterred by the cautionary statements, I asserted my comfort with the chocolate and completed my purchase. On the way home, I picked up a more mundane 85% bar for comparison.

After consuming just three squares of the 99% bar, I felt it was time to bring the experience to an end. The richness of the chocolate was leaving me satiated, and I didn’t want to waste either bar when I was not in the proper mindset for full enjoyment of the act.

If you get the opportunity to try high-quality, high-purity chocolate, I recommend that you indulge. If nothing else, you will gain a new appreciation for the rift between British commodity chocolate and what is possible from the world’s elite chocolatiers such as Lindt.