Review of Praliné Noix de Pécan - Pierre Marcolini by peter-plant-power

#palmoilfree

SMILE: LUCKILY IT'S ACCIDENTALLY VEGAN
How sweet of my upstairs neighbour 💎 to buy me a bar of luxury chocolate 🍫 from the belgian brand Pierre Marcolini to thank me for helping her out with a leaking sink. 👨‍🔧
But everytime, as a vegan without having it branded on your forehead, when you receive something edible from someone who’s not really that familiar with you, there will always be that tiny tension around your heart: yes, but what if it’s not vegan? I was lucky 🤩👌✌.
The company calls these tablets “Créations”, “Bean to Bar” and “Le Goût au Carré2”. Wow. So much marketing blahblah to try to blow you away before you’ve even blinked with your eyes.
Taste/bite: 👍👍👍The best thing about this bar. Very tasty, with subtle, deep chocolate flavours. With 72% of cocoa this is not too excessively sweet. The tablets have a good grip, can be broken easily into squares. The inside of the tablet is softer, which provides a nice contrast. However the pecans nibs on the back and outside are relatively centered, so not evenly divided. That’s no problem if you eat the whole tablet by yourself (which is easy! And which I did!😎) but unfortunate if you want to share equally with others. No idea if this was just for the item I received or in general.
Ingredients: Well of course I check at least if this tablet was vegan. The darker the chocolate, the greater chances it’s vegan, although I’ve known very dark chocolates that had butter amongst the ingredients. And the back side of the box confirms it is based on the ingredients.
Unfortunately, and that is a bummer for this luxury chocolate brand, you need to surf to their website to have more details about the nutritional values. Apart from the ingredients, the only thing mentioned is that the cocoa is of ethical origin (certified by whom???) and the names of the local cocoa bean varieties used in the tablet: Amelonado and Trinitario. Sounds like music, but is pretty nonsense as if names like Gucci or Louis Vuitton would be a guarantee for sustainability or ethics. I’m not blown away. And by the way, luxury brands make their money often both ways: by unethical and exploiting manufacturing practices and by inflating sales prices. Think of the Hermès crocodile farms for their ridiculous line of purses. I know some brand are changing their ways under public pressure, but they have a lot to improve in general.
And so I surfed. Luckily, as I mentioned, at least this Praliné Noix de Pécan is vegan without being labelled or promoted as such. (Sigh of relief). Thanks to the presence of the nuts and the cocoa, there’s almost 8% of protein in the tablet, but you need to deal with 28 g of sugars.
So you need to click and click, almost have the tablet ready to go into your shopping cart in their webstore to get the full nutritional info.
Shape/Conditioning: 90 g square tablet with a single sheet plastic film inner pouch and the lot fits in a square cardboard box that also contains a fold-out booklet with publicity to check out the other varieties as well. Yep: Space enough to print the nutritional values, but nope, space is used to seduce you to buy more.
Price: I got it as a gift, on the website I found the price of 9,00 € (January 2024) for deliveries in the EU. Which is very expensive. Almost 2,5 to 3 x the price of a 100 g organic ethical chocolate bar. But that’s what luxury is, isn’t it? Very often an overpriced illusion to fill that big gap of craving in your ego that doesn’t stop telling you You’re not enough.
The brand is Belgian. The products of this business are mainly sold in specialized chocolate and sweet treat stores and on their website.
www.pierremarcolini.com
#vegan #veganchocolate #cocoa #cocoalover #veganinbrussels #brusselsvegan #veganinbelgium #veganbelgium #veganfortheanimals #veganforhealth #veganfortheplanet #veganforever