New product Wednesday, in Dallas stores: Starbucks chocolate

by Teresa Gubbins

You hear a lot these days about Starbucks tightening up and dispensing with non-coffee items such as breakfast foods and music. But it's gone ahead with the line of chocolates announced last July, a collaboration with Hershey that started rolling out in March and is now showing up at supermarkets such as Kroger and Tom Thumb.

The marketing has been very 2008. Reviews have been done by a number of candy-themed bloggers who were shipped free tasting packages and who mostly ended up liking it. (It's hard not to like free candy.) One speculated about where the chocolate comes from/who makes it -- reminiscent of the Noka chocolate expose by Scott at DallasFood.org -- but without ever coming to a conclusion.

The label says the chocolate is "manufactured for Artisan Confections Company, Berkeley, CA", the division Hershey created in 2005 when it acquired Scharffen Berger, Moseph Schmidt, and Dagoba. But if one of those divisions were doing the line, wouldn't it say "manufactured BY", not "FOR"?

The line is described as "artisan-style chocolate inspired by Starbucks coffee, Tazo tea, and other authentic coffeehouse flavors" and includes

• chocolate bars
• "tasting squares" (which come in Tazo Chai, Passion, and Citron tea-infused flavors)
• truffles (caffe mocha, chai, espresso, and a special-expensive caramel)
• chocolate-covered coffee beans

Tom Thumb had the chocolate bars and most of the truffles, but not the tasting squares or coffee beans.

The truffles were more like Godiva chocolates, with thick, hard, shiny, molded outer shells and a small amount of not-very-creamy filling. Not my thing.

Espresso was the least sweet, with a dark-chocolate shell and a bittersweet chocolate-espresso-flavored filling; the caffe mocha truffles had the same filling but with a milk-chocolate shell, so a little sweeter.

The most exotic was the chai. There was more filling, which was more creamier, and it had a strong nutmeg flavor with little grains that could have come from ground nutmeg or vanilla bean or probably both.

The chocolate bar seemed more interesting, though anyone who likes their chocolate smooth and creamy will possibly hate it as it contained ground-up coffee beans (Starbucks' Casa Cielo) that added 1. a noticeable grit and 2. ashy flavor -- not everyone's cup of tea, obviously, but appealing if you like things with texture. It had a nice solid feel and a pretty scrawly design. Borrowing a page from Target's nicely-dressed Choxie line, the packaging was pleasing. There's a "Starbucks" logo on the boxes that's raised so that it looks like a label that's been slapped on.

The candy bar was $3.99. The truffles came 10 to a package and cost $6.99 (some of the blogs quoted the price at $5.49, but I have the receipt right here); $6.99 seemed steep at the cash register but one supposes it's in line with your typical aspirational chocolate sold at a supermarket.

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