Great Taste Award is organised by the Guild of Fine Food in the UK. It is the acknowledged benchmark for fine food and drink. It has been described as the ‘Oscars’ of the food world and the ‘epicurean equivalent of the Booker prize’.
At Fifth Dimension Chocolates, we have won multiple Great Taste awards across our complete range of products (Filled Chocolates, Chocwich, Salmoran, Tablettes and Caramel Sauces).
In the first year we entered the Great Taste in 2014, we won an award for our "Meaux" (Whole Grain Mustard Chocolate). We are the first and only company making a ganache infused with wholegrain mustard, and this is one of several award-winning savoury chocolates we have in our collection. This chocolate was featured in Channel 4's Daily Brunch (hosted by Tim Lovejoy and Simon Rimmer) in October 2014.
In 2015, we won 4 awards, one for each of the four types of chocolate products made by us at the time:
- "Genoa" (Basil Chocolate) - the judges pointed out that "the shell is crisp and the ganache has a great texture. We love the ganache and the gentle flavour of basil which comes through really well. The balance of sweetness is just right."
- Raspberry Pate de Fruits Chocwich - "Pretty presentation, nice idea and a lovely colour. Good snap on the chocolate and a sharpsweet raspberry flavour contrasts with this."
- Salmoran - the judges commented "Lovely crunch, not too brittle and all flavours come through well , balancing nicely with the chocolate used, not too dark or bitter. Very moreish!"
- Colombian 70% Cacao Dark Chocolate Tablette - the judges noted that "there is some bright fruitiness to the cacao, along with rather sour notes, and also some depth."
In 2016, two of our filled chocolates were awards 2 stars by Great Taste: "Orleans" (Raspberry Chamboard) and "Hanoi" (Ginger Caramel). For Orleans, the Great Taste judges was impressed by the "delicious ganache with just the right amount of sharpness to balance the chocolate. Smooth and silky inner contrasts so well with the crisp shell. Very clever. Superb thin shell and excellent quality chocolate." For Hanoi, the comment was "Stunning look. Lovely mix of textures. Not over sweet with the flavours of ginger and caramel marrying beautifully. The depth of the final cocoa notes were rounded off to perfection by the lingering warmth of the ginger. More please!"
In the same year, we launched our first caramel sauce (Mango & Passion Fruit Caramel Sauce) and that was awarded 1-star straight away. The caramel sauce was born out of our "Bangkok" Mango & Passion Fruit Caramel chocolate, which was a winner at International Chocolate Awards in 2015 and we had so many requests from customers asking us to make caramel sauce, so they can put the sauce onto ice-cream and pancakes. So we are very happy that the sauce itself has also won an award.
In 2017, we won 4 awards across 3 different lines of products, including 2 awards for the 2 new caramel sauces we have launched: Soy caramel sauce won 2 stars, while the Yuzu caramel sauce won 1 star. Both sauces are based on recipes we have originally developed for our award-winning filled chocolates: "Hong Kong" (Soy caramel chocolate) which has been dubbed as the "Salted Caramel 2.0"; and "Kagoshima" (Yuzu and pink peppercorn chocolate). Another award went to one of our filled chocolates: Popayan (House Dark) - this is using the same Colombian 70% dark chocolate which won us a Great Taste in 2015 in the form of tablette/chocolate bar. The 4th award was for our Bolivian 68% dark chocolate tablette.
In 2018, we won another 4 awards: A 2-star award was given to our Colombian 65% cocoa dark chocolate tablette - this chocolate is used as the base for some of our award-winning filled chocolates also. Three of the new filled chocolates we released in the preceding 12 months won 1-star awards, including Warsaw (Blackcurrant & Pernod), Kolkata (Chai) and Grytviken (Whisky Water Ganache).