Ghirardelli Chocolates

The Ghirardelli company is based in San Fransisco, California. Founded in 1852, Ghirardelli is the only major U.S. chocolate manufacturer on the West coast. They're known mostly for their chocolate bars and chocolate chips, although recently I've also been seeing a pre-sweetened cocoa powder of theirs in the stores.

Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate

This is an easy one to review because I've already reviewed Hershey's milk chocolate. Honestly, I can't much tell the difference, and as such, this chocolate also gets a 2 rating. The one difference I can tell is that this one has a subtle almond flavor to it, which I can't really account for from the ingredient list. I've heard that companies don't have to list ingredients that are extremely small fractions of their products, but I don't know if that's true or merely urban legend. If that is true, perhaps that is the explanation. In any case, the almond flavor is there, so if you like almonds you might prefer this chocolate to Hershey's.

Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate

This one is also easy to review because I've already reviewed Lindt's Chocolat Lindt Excellence. I'm beginning to think that maybe the Ghirardelli folks just clone other chocolates. Probably they don't do that, but it does taste like it. The ingredient list is very standard: sugar, unsweetened chocolate, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla. I think that this chocolate is a bit sweeter than Lindt's dark chocolate, so I rank it a bit under Lindt, even though I'm giving it a 3.5 rating. All in all, it's certainly a very nice chocolate. It yields its flavor quickly, it tastes strongly of chocolate (but, in my opinion, too much of sugar), and it's not too waxy.