Our favorite chocolate bar

A little note here on something we have been eating regularly that I have no part in preparing whatsoever.

I am sure there are some among you who will hate me at least a little bit when I tell you this, but what S. and I really like to do with chocolate bars is to buy just one and eat it very slowly, over the course of a week or two between the two of us, just doling out a square apiece here and there.

The Vosges Naga bar is excellent for this, but not readily available in our usual shopping circuit, so we often purchase something by Ritter Sport instead. There are many fine flavors of Ritter Sport, but none compares to the Rum Trauben Nuss.

While I am not particularly a fan of rum raisin ice cream, I am passionately dedicated to these Ritter Sport bars of milk chocolate with rum, raisins, and hazelnuts. I love the smell as you snap off a square: a literally intoxicating mixture of the chocolate, hazelnuts, and LOTS of lovely rum.

The ingredients list indicates that these bars are flavored with a healthy dose of real rum, rather than feeble old rum flavoring. The raisins have an excellent texture (unlike, in my view, what happens to them in rum raisin ice cream) and taste as if they've been soaked in the rum for a week. The hazelnuts crunch nicely and seem to be toasted. The proportion of nuts and raisins to chocolate is quite high. Come to think of it, Rum Trauben Nuss is sort of like a vastly improved and more slender Chunky bar.

With so much actual booze inside, these seem like the sort of thing you wouldn't be able to find in the US, but here they are, though unfortunately not at Trader Joe's, which offers a smaller selection of less delectable Ritter Sports instead. I think we've found them at World Market and a number of smaller shops with a decent selection of European imports. For example, the Mediterranean shop at Cleveland's West Side Market has them, as does the candy shop on Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill, in Pittsburgh. And of course, they are also available online, including from Indian Gift Portal, which I mention because they so accurately describe them as "extremely pleasing." Many other chocolates may be "delectable" or "tasty," but only Rum Trauben Nuss pleases in the extreme. Just so!

Comments

[briank]

OMG! The Ritter Sport rum-raisin-nut is absolutely the best.chocolate bar. EVAR.

I have not been able to find them for a long time in the Boston-Cambridge area stores I always used to buy them from, and figured Ritter Sport had simply stopped making them.

This gives me immense hope!

-- briank (a Friend of Torrez)

[headworm]

Literally intoxicating? Please try to refrain from using the word "literally" in the non literal sense.

Great blog however.

[redfox]

Unless you are the ghost of H.W. Fowler, please try to refrain from correcting people's grammar. The bar is made with real rum, which is an actual intoxicant. While the odor itself will not cause you to become intoxicated, it is in fact the scent of something that will, in sufficient quantities.

Meanwhile, please also see this paper on semantic change in literally, truly, really, and other related words.

Glad you like the weblog. (If you are the ghost of H.W. Fowler, thank you for your interest from beyond the grave.)

[taza]

hahahahaha! loved the comment back to the word nerd parser!

nice to read you again--just when i found you last time around (you came up on a google search for some arcane food item--oh yeah, AJVAR!) it seemed you were taking a break.

i'm a fan of the dark choc, whole hazelnut Ritter bar, but will look for this other one too!

[redfox]

Thanks! That is indeed an excellent Ritter bar as well, I quite agree. I can hardly wait until the farmer's market is bursting with eggplant and green peppers so I can make ajvar again. (Odd that the version I make is so different from the red pepper stuff one always sees in jars, but I like mine better, so hey.)

[Amy]

I found the rum Ritter bar at our local Superfresh. Whew, I knew Baltimore was getting fancy, but I didn't expect this much fanciness! I also picked up the tasty marzipan filled Ritter at Wegman's, which I recommend.

[darryl]

I just finished off a Riiter Sports Rhum Raisin bar,after nibling on it for a week in the refrigerator.Quite satisfying.Theres another though on the table unopen.Their in most fast food marts in Thailand and probaly the supermarkets.I thought I might find them at military bx and px stores in the states but never have.