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Ritter Sport Extra Dark: Germany
Ritter Sport is a very interesting chocolate outfit out of Stuttgart, Germany. I can’t tell you exactly how Ritter Sport did it, but this Gernan company has somehow been able to position itself successfully between the low-end and the high-end, but more on the high-end side, without being sublime chocolate. It could be the clever “Quality. Chocolate. Squared” slogan, referring to their 4 x 4 blocks of chocolate able to fit into the pocket of any sports jacket. It could be great distribution. Ritter Sports show everywhere. It could be the price. Ritter Sports come in at the same price per gram as ultra cheap multinational chocolate while exuding a more premium image. In fact, I concluded after reviewing several Ritter Sports in the past that this brand was the best bang for your buck at a Thailand 7-11 outlet.
Ritter Sport isn’t the kind of brand you seek out. It’s more a brand you buy when there aren’t better chocolates at better values available. I had realized this quite awhile back and moved on. But just a few weeks ago, I was contacted by an American in Shanghai seeking my opinion on Ritter Sports’ Extra Dark. Was it good? I didn’t like not knowing, so at my earliest convenience, I went out and got my hands on it. You can’t let the fans down.
[Click the picture to get the rest of the data and the complete review on this bar, okay?]
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1 Comments
February 13th, 2012 at 4:31 am
I agree about Ritter’s clever positioning, and definitely think it’s the best value for the money for many of the flavors (love the Marzipan, and dark Hazelnut). But I first discovered Ritter living in Germany as a kid, 25 years ago. So when it first came to the US I felt so relieved – for me, it is definitely a brand worth seeking out.
In recent years it’s become my go-to chocolate: I have eaten around 500 of the Extra Dark bars myself in the past eight years (yes it may be a problem…). I find the Extra Dark to be superior to, say, Lindt’s 70% or 71% bar… even before the strange ‘new flavor’ (i.e. added salt, so far as I can tell) version of Lindt came out about a year or two ago. I think Ritter Sport is frequently better than chocolates twice its price. It has exactly the right amount of sweetness, so far as I’m concerned.
Now that I’ve just read up a bit on child labor in Ivory Coast, however, I’m depressed to learn that Ritter Sport has no good policy on how they source their cacao. It sounds like they get some good stuff from South America, but not enough to even produce all of their extra dark bars. So almost certainly (based on what I’ve been reading online in the past hour, at least) they are getting a fair amount of cacao from child labor at the moment. Unfortunately I can’t afford any of the ‘fair market’ chocolates in the quantity I need to survive, but as soon as I can I will have to bid Ritter Sport adieu.
Their motto, by the way, is even better in German: “Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut.” The funniest thing about it is that of course it’s not practical at all – it’s very hard to re-seal the package, because of its square form and the material they use. So that aspect of the Sport format is a total sham, in my opinion. But no matter — at this price I have found nothing else that comes close (maybe Cote d’Or on sale?).
Cheers – glad to find a chocolate blog.