It's time to emerge from blogtirement! It's been a little while, but before it got too hot to ship chocolate to my house, I purchased this 9-pack of Tirol chocolates from napaJapan. It's the standard assortment, though Tirol always rotates a few limited edition flavors in and out of these packs. If you bought this assortment now, you'd get Lemon Cookie instead of Caramel Bis.
Some of these flavors have been reviewed here before, including Milk, Hot Cake, and White & Cookie Crunch. Some of the never-before reviewed on this blog flavors in this assortment are classic Tirol chocolates, so most of them should be easy to find online or in Japanese import grocers.
One of the rotating flavors in this mix was Caramel Bis, which is a twist on the classic Bis. The dark chocolate and caramel chocolate layers reminded me of purin. The lighter caramel chocolate was sweet and creamy, and it mixed well with the darker, slightly bitter chocolate base. The center biscuit added a fun crunch, but as usual, not much flavor. The darker chocolate was a nice touch and it made this flavor stand out.
According to the Collection section of Tirol's website, Chocolate Almond has been through a few different wrappers before the cute one we see today was introduced in 1996. The tried and true combination of almond and chocolate is just what you'd expect. The chocolate smelled nice and nutty, and it a little sticky but melted smoothly. The almond had a crunchy caramelized coating and it imparted hints of cherry flavor.
According to the Tirol website, the Milk Nougat flavor was introduced in 1983 and the Swiss-inspired packaging hasn't changed since then. I tried to break this one in half for the second picture but the nougat was too hard! The piece only smelled of plain chocolate, but the nougat had a slightly nutty flavor. I liked the taste but wasn't crazy about the texture; the nougat was at first sticky like taffy, then crumbly, and finally it got stuck in my teeth.
Regular Bis is one of Tirol's standard flavors, and it's also one of my favorites. It's a simple combination of sweet milk chocolate and a crunchy, cracker-like biscuit. The biscuit was dry and pretty bland, but it added a nice crunch and balanced the sweetness of the milk chocolate.
Strawberry was a simple pink strawberry filling covered in milk chocolate. The filling was creamy, fluffy, and full of strawberry seeds. Despite a slightly soapy taste, the strawberry flavor wasn't bad. On the whole, it was quite sweet.
Finally, the iconic Coffee Nougat flavor. I love the contrast of the colorful lettering against the dark wrapper, but I like the packaging better than the flavor. It smelled mostly of chocolate and just barely of coffee. The nougat had a mild, lightly roasted coffee flavor, and it had the consistency of extremely thick, sticky caramel. This is another stick-to-your-teeth piece, and it's just not worth the potential tooth decay.
Overall, this collection was a B. The Caramel Bis was my favorite of the bunch, but though they may be classics, I just wasn't crazy about either nougat flavor.
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