Vosges Matcha Tea Bar

Posted by Edmund in Chocolate, Featured Articles, Gourmet Chocolate Bars, USA | 0 comments

Composition: Japanese Matcha Green Tea, 41% Deep Milk Chocolate
Region of Production: USA
Price: $7.50 from Vosges’ site

I’ve become quite the fan of Vosges milk chocolates lately, so I was looking forward to trying out this latest variety, a take on green tea. As a good, tea-loving Armenian, I just can’t resist anything that has that aromatic, slightly bitter, refreshing tea flavor to it, so I might be a bit biased when it comes to such flavors. Vosges’ Matcha Tea Bar really did hit the spot, though.

Before starting the review, I should note one thing about this bar: It comes in both a 3 oz. and a 0.5 oz. version. I tasted the smaller of the two, which is quite an unwieldy form, since it’s not enough to get a perfect taste of the chocolate. Still, I’ll give it a go.

The first thing that struck me was the presentation. Even though the bar was so tiny, the appearance was actually quite eye-catching. As with all Vosges bars, the packaging was a small box, displaying the ingredient. More importantly, once you open the Matcha Tea Bar, you’re hit with a proverb, written in large letters across the bar: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” It really is quite fitting, too: You’re staring at a milk chocolate bar, and yet the flavor you’re going to get is anything but normal.

And that’s the strength of this bar: sheer flavor. The matcha tea comes through intensely. I didn’t expect it to be quite so strong, but the tea in large part stands out as stronger than the milk chocolate sweetness itself. It’s a bonus in my book, since all too often flavored milk chocolate bars come off as very weak, yet it can also be offsetting if you’re in the mood for a true chocolate sensation. Still, the bar has a very herbal quality to it, and it has an enjoyable, though short, aftertaste that leaves the aroma of tea on your palate, as though you’ve just had a real sip of green tea. The bar has just a tiny bit of complexity, too: Other flavors I got included edamame, bamboo, and a bit of soy milk. The bar is, however, an overwhelmingly one-dimensional experience, even if it does an extremely good job of capturing the real essence of that flavor.

As for texture, Vosges’ Matcha Tea Bar seems a bit hard at first, and you in fact need to break through it. There’s a nice snap, which I enjoyed, though it was a bit hard. However, the melt itself is quite nice, with that toughness immediately disappearing and the chocolate melting smoothly as a milk chocolate should. I’m still not a fan of Vosges’s use of soy lecithin, though, as the bar can be a bit too artificially rich and creamy.

I also like the use of dark milk chocolate for this bar. At 41%, it’s a bar with some strong sweetness to it, but with also a rather strong cocoa flavor. That’s essential here, because the matcha tea is strong enough that it threatens to overshadow the chocolate completely. At the same time, there shouldn’t be too much sweetness if the herby flavor is going to come through. 41%, then, is a great compromise to meet both of those demands. Moreover, that percentage allows the bar to retain a bit of the milky creaminess, which befits something you would drink (i.e. it captures the liquid quality of tea a bit better).

Some of the problems with the bar include the aforementioned one-dimensionality (but that really is at least partly by design) and the chocolate’s relative weakness, as the matcha tea takes the center stage, using the chocolate only as an accessory. A final complaint is that the bar is not too round, so the flavor doesn’t really hit all corners of your mouth or your whole palate. While you do get a great herbal flavor, it can fade quickly, leaving you very little to savor.

Still, I do have to admire just how well Vosges has managed to capture the flavor of green tea. While its Matcha Tea Bar is not my favorite, I would still recommend it to tea lovers.

Taste: 4.3/5.0
Melt: 3.0/5.0
Length: 2.0/10-2.5/5.0
Flavor: 4.1/5.0
Value: 3.5/5.0. For tea lovers, this is about as close to the real thing as possible, though still overpriced.
Overall Score: 3.8/5.0