Christine Sir Cleette: Think about the coating on a chocolate. You want it to be shiny. You want it to snap. You want it to be thin and uniform and also in harmony with the filling that is covering. And that requires a great amount of skill and also really adds to your overall experience of tasting the chocolate.

Kyra Blackwell: I'm Kyra Blackwell.

Rosie Garin: I'm Rosie Garin. And you're listening to the Wire Cutter Show.

Christine Sir Cleette: Rosie, hello.

Rosie Garin: It's going to be your favorite episode we've ever done today. I guarantee because we are going to get to taste some amazing chocolates.

Kyra Blackwell: I do love chocolate.

Christine Sir Cleette: So, yeah, it's the run-up to Valentine's Day. We were racking our brains. What could we do for this episode? There are so many things Wire Cutter covers that would be appropriate, but we haven't covered box chocolates yet. And we have a really, really great guide to box chocolates.

Rosie Garin: I like that you've been gently nudging us toward this episode for a long time. And I'm sort of upset that it's taken this long, but there's no time like the present.

Christine Sir Cleette: Well, a good idea is always a good idea. So, today we are going to bring on Gabriella Gersonen. She is Wire Cutters kitchen editor who oversees all of our taste tests. So, she has a really fun job. She is coordinating taste tests in our office all the time. She's also a seasoned food writer. She has over 20 years of experience writing about food, tasting food, doing all the food things that food journalists do. She has won a James Beard Award for a book she co-wrote called Love Japan. And she knows a ton about chocolate. For our guide to box chocolates, she's tasted close to two dozen brands of chocolate. So, she's going to come in with some real knowledge for us.

Kyra Blackwell: I'm coming for her job.

Christine Sir Cleette: Yeah. All right, we're going to talk to Gabby after the break and later we're going to eat some chocolate. That's right. And it's going to be great.

Rosie Garin: I'm excited.

Christine Sir Cleette: Be right back.

Christine Sir Cleette: Gabriella, welcome to the Wire Cutter Show.

Gabriella Gersonen: Thank you for having me.

Christine Sir Cleette: Very happy to have you. Um, starting with the most important question, I think, which is how did you end up with the job of testing box chocolates cuz it sounds awful. I'm really sorry that you ended up with the assignment. How did it evolve?

Gabriella Gersonen: It's been hard.

Christine Sir Cleette: Yeah.

Rosie Garin: Yeah.

Gabriella Gersonen: Yeah. Well, we do a guide once, then we do it again, and we do it again, and we do it again. And a lot of the times, the authors might start off very much energized by the subject matter, and then after, I don't know, a handful of years, they're ready to hand it off. So, I inherited this guide from my colleague Leslie Stockton, and I I just grabbed on really tight, and I'm not going to let go. So, don't get any ideas, anyone.

Kyra Blackwell: Well, I'm curious. There are so many box chocolates to choose from and I'm sure there's a ton that just crop up all the time. So, how did you go about sort of narrowing down what you were going to test for this guide and what are the kind of criteria you're looking for in box chocolate?

Gabriella Gersonen: Well, there is a baseline criteria and what we're really looking for is quality and deliciousness. And so, when we're talking about quality, we're talking about purity of ingredients. So high quality chocolate usually which is made from cocoa mass, cocoa butter and sugar and is lacking vegetable oils for instance which can be used to supplement lower quality chocolates but really change the flavor and the mouth feel of the chocolate. Quality of ingredients also extends to the filling. So you don't want to be seeing artificial flavors. You want to be seeing fresh, high quality ingredients like dairy, nuts, herbs, fruit. It really comes across in the tasting. There's there's no substituting a good ingredient when you are eating. It's like, you know, Italian cooking is very simple because it all relies on the quality of the ingredients. And the principle really carries over to all of our testing and it's especially relevant in boxed chocolates because there are so many products out there that are fun and tasty, but they're candy. They're not a high quality confection.

Christine Sir Cleette: So, is it fair to say if you're looking at an ingredient list on a box of chocolate and there are a bunch of words you can't pronounce, it's probably a good sign that it doesn't have like the highest quality ingredients. It should be simple. It should be things that you kind of understand what they are.

Gabriella Gersonen: Yes. Unless there's some cacao pod from South America whose name you can't pronounce, which is probably a good sign.

Kyra Blackwell: Okay. Okay.

Christine Sir Cleette: Are there any other qualities that you're testing for?

Gabriella Gersonen: Absolutely. So, box chocolates are really interesting. They're not just a a recipe. They're a craft. So, the person who is making a box of chocolates has so many factors to work into this little tiny edible experience. So, think about the coating on a chocolate. You want it to be shiny. You want it to snap. You want it to be thin and uniform and also in harmony with the filling that is covering. And that requires a great amount of skill and also really adds to your overall experience of tasting the chocolate and flavor. You look at the menu at a restaurant and you order a pecan pie and it shows up and there's like three pecans in it. You're like, "Well, this should just be called a butter tart because there's no pecans in it." So, there is a managing of expectations on the little key or legend in every chocolate box. There is kind of a promise that exists. And when you taste that chocolate, you want the flavor of the chocolate to match up to the promise of it. You want the chocolate to coat your mouth in a pleasant way, not in a a waxy, oily way. Uh, you want flavor to bloom and open up as it reaches your body temperature. There's also a visual element. You want it to look appetizing. You want the box to be pretty. You want it to come packaged the way it was intended to and not all jostled and dented. And that is a consideration also with Wire Cutter because we're telling people to buy things through mail order a lot of the time. and we have to reassure them that yes, you're paying $90 for a box of chocolates and a lot of that is going into shipping, but they're going to show up looking good. So, it's kind of stressful just telling you all about it because you really have to be on your game to put out a beautiful and delicious box of chocolates.

Christine Sir Cleette: I mean, all of that strikes me as so sensuous, right? It's like using all the senses, which makes a great Valentine's gift, right? If you really get a nice box of chocolates, if you've ever experienced that, it is really, really special and it's kind of like you enjoy each one and it's like you can savor them. It's not something you want to gobble, you know, experiential.

Gabriella Gersonen: Yes, exactly.

Kyra Blackwell: So, thinking about the 40 plus brands Wire Cutter has tested of box chocolates over the years, can you talk about some of the different categories that box chocolates might fall into?

Gabriella Gersonen: Yes. I think that as Americans when we think boxed chocolates, we think about Russell Stovers and Whitman's and Seas and that's for me in a way the Platonic ideal. We're still looking for an excellent example of that style of chocolate. But we do have some picss that migrate more into that territory. For instance, I think of that as like an Americanstyle box chocolate. We also have chocolates these days that really seem to be expressions of a pastry chef. There's Melissa Capel chocolates which are one of our picks and it's quite extraordinary. It's almost Willy Wonka-esque. The exterior of the chocolate is beautiful. There are these very swirly saturated colors and that's a style that's popular now. It's really the interior that sets it apart. And and what she does is she has distinct components that when you cut through just to see the cross-section, it's like a little tweezers put everything into its rightful place. And on top of that, the flavors really come through. So I think of that as almost more like a chef driven chocolate. You have chocolates that are perhaps more for the chocolate purist like dandelion chocolate that I brought here today. It is purely ginache. Dandelion chocolate makes beantobar chocolate which means they manufacture their chocolate from the cacao bean inhouse to create their chocolate bars and bon bonss.

Kyra Blackwell: Wow.

Gabriella Gersonen: And what's fascinating about this box is that it is single origin truffle. They're each made from a single origin chocolate from a different place. Oh, so this is really like my mom who is going to close her eyes and be like, you know what, this is 85% and I think this is and she'll name a country or something.

Christine Sir Cleette: There's that, but there's also, you know, they give you these tasting notes. This is next level, right? Cuz we're saying if you say the chocolate's going to be like a hazelnut chocolate, it needs to taste like hazelnuts. Okay, that's like good baseline. In the Dandelion single origin chocolate truffles, they're telling you that you're tasting strawberry, you're tasting caramel, but it's it's just chocolate. And then when you taste them, you're like, "Come on, am I really going to taste these things?" And what our tasting panel and I found was like, "Yes, you really do." And each chocolate, which is just dark chocolate, has a distinct flavor from the next one. So you can get very It's It's funny because Christine, you said is very sensual. You also get very cerebral with these.

Kyra Blackwell: Yeah.

Gabriella Gersonen: You can really go deep.

Christine Sir Cleette: It sounds a little bit like people who are really into coffee and you have all these notes that you're like, you know, this has got, you know, molasses and whatever. You're not saying that there's actually banana flavoring in that chocolate. It's actually the presentation of some kind of banana type flavor that's coming out in the chocolate. It's to pull out one of the most pretentious words in a food description, the teroir, which is that the chocolate comes from a very specific place. So, it's an expression of the place and an expression of how the chocolate was processed. It's extraordinary how it can impact the flavor.

Christine Sir Cleette: These are expensive. A lot of these boxes are 50, 60, maybe $90. If anybody has gone to go buy a really nice box of chocolates, they might have been like, I don't know. Am I going to pull the trigger? Beyond good ingredients, what makes a box of chocolate worth that much?

Gabriella Gersonen: Yes. Well, one thing to keep in mind, you know, we talked about quality of ingredients, price of ingredients, prices of chocolate, cocoa, cacao, it fluctuates wildly. And I reached out to some of the chocoliers who we do feature in the guide just to get a sense of why our chocolate's so expensive. And Kate Schaefer from Ragged Coast Chocolates in Maine said that she's paying 74% more for chocolate than she did 3 years ago. And that there were crop failures in Africa. There are tariffs in Latin America. And people who we feature, they're buying very high quality cacao. And it's being impacted by, you know, global considerations. Also, many of these places are small businesses. In fact, most of them are. So, we're comparing them head-to-head with these mass-produced factory-made products that while they're wonderful kind of wallpaper in our lives, and maybe we like to eat them and enjoy them, they operate on completely different scales. And you know, many of these businesses, most of them are independently owned, many of them are womenowned, and they're paying skilled laborers to make a very specific product. So, it's a very fair question, and I dogeared for the future. I would like to get a good budget pick, at least one good budget pick for this guide for the future. But um this is a luxury item. That's basically what it is.

Christine Sir Cleette: That's I think that's helpful framing though, you know, to be thinking like, oh, this is something that is very very special. That is a not all the time type of a treat. It is. That's the bummer of it, right? It's nice if you have a local shop where you can go in and you don't have to commit to a 12piece box of chocolates. Maybe you can buy fewer chocolates and then it doesn't cost as much. If somebody wants to spend less money but still have a high-end chocolate experience, it's not as fun as a box of chocolates, but a really good bar of chocolate. If you're buying the Cadillac of Artisal chocolate, you're still going to be spending under $20. I also think that there is a lot of fun to buy the chocolate of your youth, to get the Toblon bar, to get I think Fer Rocher is really making a comeback. I would like to see Almond Roka make a comeback. I interviewed Michael Recudi who his Recuti Chocolates are our overall pick for Bon Bons. And I I asked, you know, what's your favorite supermarket chocolate? Some of the confectioners who I asked abstained from answering, but

Rosie Garin: I take the fifth.

Christine Sir Cleette: I take the fifth, but Michael, for Michael, it was, you know, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Junior Mints. And there is joy to be found outside of the gastronomic height that chocolates can achieve. And sometimes if you don't have the cash to spend or you don't want to, just find a joy some other way.

Kyra Blackwell: I do so love a junior man.

Rosie Garin: I do. I also I love those in the freezer and those

Kyra Blackwell: making them.

Christine Sir Cleette: Um okay. So, what I'm hearing here, Gabriella, is that if you are looking for a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day or beyond, maybe it's a gift, a special gift for someone, what you're really wanting to look for are high quality ingredients. Anything that's in our guide is going to fit that bill. When you might get a little sticker shocked by the prices, there are reasons why these boxes of chocolate are really expensive. They're not just gouging you. It is really the quality of ingredients they're buying, the scale at which they're working, the amount of effort and work that goes into making these beautiful little confections, and that if you are not able or desiring to spend that much, you might want to think about gourmet bar chocolate as a gift. That would be a good place to go if you're still wanting sort of that gourmet experience without having to spend 90 bucks, 50 bucks. You could spend under 20 and get a great bar of chocolate, but also no shade if you want to get something cheaper. If you want to go for sort of those like classic candy type bars, that's also great and delicious. A heart-shaped box might just do it. And it won't really matter what's inside. But since we are Wire Cutter, it is our duty to tell you where to find the best chocolates. And if you're going to spend money on boxed chocolates, because it's not unusual to spend $60 on a box of chocolates when you see what's out there, we want you to know what's worth the money. One of the most memorable gifts I received for my wedding 16 years ago, I got lots of beautiful gifts, but it was a box of chocolate from Maison Desa. And I'd never had their chocolate before, and it was so special and so awesome. And I still remember that as just like a real wow kind of gift that my husband and I just savored for like two weeks, you know.

Rosie Garin: Why am I getting emotional?

Christine Sir Cleette: We're going to take a quick break on the other side. We're doing a taste test. Exciting. And we are going to do a little bit of a game with you, Gabby, where we match personality type with potential flavor profile of boxed chocolates that you might like. So stick around. We'll be right back.

Christine Sir Cleette: Welcome back. Our guest today is our colleague on Wire Cutters Kitchen team, Gabriella Gersonensen. She wrote our guide to box chocolates. And now we get to my favorite part of the episode where we're gonna really get in to all of our picks. I'm loving that we're about to geek out majorly on all of these different boxes.

Rosie Garin: Not to pull from that enthusiasm and excitement. Um I'm going to get sad for just a second and ask you uh Gabriella about allergies. So I have allergies to tree nuts, to peanuts. Kyra, our other co-host, doesn't eat dairy. So, I'm wondering what the boxed chocolate landscape looks like for people like us.

Gabriella Gersonen: Yes. First of all, my condolences.

Rosie Garin: Thank you so much.

Gabriella Gersonen: Uh, I think that um it's very serious when you can have a physical reaction to food. And we do have an allergen-free pick that is actually manufactured in a facility that has no nuts, dairy, gluten. They're also vegan. The brand is Amore Deona. They're very beautifully made. Little box is actually one of our more affordable picks, too. Nice.

Gabriella Gersonen: I brought a box of stick with me sweets, which are made here in New York City. The chocolier comes from the kitchens of Purse, which is for, you know, our restaurant geeks at Thomas Keller restaurant. Very

Christine Sir Cleette: trey fancy.

Gabriella Gersonen: Trey fancy. Trey Fancy. And she offers a nut-free option. She offers a vegan option. We have a lot of vegan options. A lot of us preferred the vegan versions to the original versions because dairy has flavor and a lot of the vegan chocolates seem to cut through some of the dairy flavor that you might find in chocolate.

Kyra Blackwell: There was clarity in the vegan chocolates that even surpassed the clarity of flavor in the conventional chocolates and that was very exciting. So we didn't feel like we were missing out. What's the swap generally in vegan chocolate? If you're not using dairy, what are they upping in the vegan chocolate to compensate?

Gabriella Gersonen: This is the part that is a little sad because a lot of it is nut-based.

Rosie Garin: You might find almond milk in a milk chocolate that's vegan. Coconut, which I think is a tree nut issue.

Kyra Blackwell: It is a tree nut. I'm okay with it and I also am generally okay with crosscontamination. A lot of people aren't. And so it is heartening to hear that there are picss that are created in a completely safe kitchen cuz that for a lot of folks I know makes a difference is is really important and crucial.

Gabriella Gersonen: I want to add more to the guide that are accessible to people with dietary restrictions.

Rosie Garin: You have described yourself as a bit of a chocolate concierge. So, we're going to give you an archetype or a personality type or a specific scenario and you tell us the box chocolate brand you'd match them with.

Gabriella Gersonen: Okay.

Christine Sir Cleette: Okay. So, we'll call it um who is this for?

Gabriella Gersonen: Okay. Is there a buzzer? I'm just feeling like this should be a show to be like wait for.

Christine Sir Cleette: Okay. Great.

Rosie Garin: All right. All right. I'll start. Chocolate traditionalist likes classic flavors.

Gabriella Gersonen: Yes. So, Valerie confections. It's really amazing how good her toffee is. If you like a snappy butter toffee, which I think is a very Americanstyle confection, uh she does the best that many of our tasters had ever had. And she also makes fantastic salted caramels and bourbon truffles, chocolate ganache. So I think a person who is looking to stay within that American like chewy caramel palette, this could be a good choice. And there is also a brand called Shakola Modern. And do not let the uh French name, it reminds me of like grandma's bon bons. They they come in beautiful molded shapes and there's marzipan fillings and jam fillings and cordials and also our pick happens to be vegan the shakalama but by no means does it compromise the flavor in any way.

Kyra Blackwell: I love it. Okay, so how about for an adventurous eater? So someone who goes to a restaurant because they have a tasting menu.

Gabriella Gersonen: So for the tasting menu lover in your life, I have two picks in mind. One of them again French. We do have to thank the French for many things. Thank you. Rishard is a brand. It's made in France. And there is a box that we have enjoyed. It has two little drawers. So the top drawer has a mosaic of little tiny, it's almost like an Alice in Wonderland, like a little tiny one bite chocolate. Each one has a different flavor. And the flavor, it's extraordinary how much flavor they can get into one little cube. And they have herb flavors and nut flavors and fruit flavors. And we're talking yuzu and um you know, hazelnut praline and thyme and and they've thought about every single flavor they could put in. And you take a little bite and you look at the key and you're like, "Oh, wow. That really does taste like that." And there's also a little tray of snappy thin chocolate wafers. So, they're just little thin tempered chocolate discs. And it's quite simple. And the percentage of the chocolate is printed on each little disc.

Rosie Garin: Man, oh man.

Gabriella Gersonen: It's it's it's special. And it's also very a very culinary experience.

Christine Sir Cleette: If my husband is listening, that's the one I want. Thanks.

Gabriella Gersonen: Okay. So yeah, that's uh I I'm realizing I'm so affusive about all of these, but the ones that are really good are really really good. Melissa Capel, I also mentioned her. She has a studio in Vegas, and it's like Willy Wonka. First of all, the exterior is beautiful, which I don't mention enough because I I think often the exteriors can trick you into thinking you're getting something that you're not. But they just look like they're little domes and they have these beautiful swirls of color that convey a depth. It's like a galaxy, like a galaxy in a chocolate. They're glossy. They're the shells are impossibly thin. And the flavor, you cut into it and it's like a perfect little construction. One of the flavors I mentioned in the guide is peanut butter ganache and um I forgot what kind of jam and a little bio crouton. It's like a peanut butter and jelly.

Kyra Blackwell: Oh wow.

Gabriella Gersonen: Um another one was like a little yogurt mousse with three dots of rose jam. The construction on its own is remarkable, but you really do get the flavor precision and interplay of a high-end plated dessert. It's it's like magic.

Rosie Garin: What about if I'm gifting to someone I don't know super well uh but I do want to impress them.

Gabriella Gersonen: Yes. Well, here's a you know two approaches you could take. One would be sticking with a more conservative choice and I feel very validated by your anecdote Christine about your wedding gift from Lamezone de Shaka because what first comes to mind is our Lamezone de Shaka pick which also happens to be vegan. Again, listeners, it is not a demerit if a box of chocolates happens to be vegan. You don't have to be vegan to enjoy it. And this box is fruit ganache. Each little baton, which is just beautifully precise little tall standing rectangle of ganache coated in chocolate, has an infusion of fruit flavor. It's very sleek and I think a really good chocolate can make a person feel like a connoisseur.

Christine Sir Cleette: Yeah.

Gabriella Gersonen: Because you take a bite and it looks like pure chocolate, but you get, you know, this like singing bright note of yuzu or of passion fruit. And I I think it can elevate the person who's tasting it because they can taste this ephemeral invisible flavor and it makes them feel like they have

Christine Sir Cleette: a palette. So it's not like when I'm drinking wine and I'm like, "Yeah, I am getting tar."

Christine Sir Cleette: Well, to that point though, I think like everyone has probably had some kind of experience with food or drink where they don't necessarily know that much about this sty this type of food, but when they taste a really good version of it, it's like your eyes are opened. Oh, wow. This can be so much better than I even thought that it could be. I've had that experience with cheese. I've had that experience with coffee, wine, chocolate. So, I do think that that's a lovely gift for someone who don't know super well. I guess you do want to find out if they like chocolate, but what kind of monsters like chocolate?

Gabriella Gersonen: Well, the the other recommendation is sort of in a different category, which is the Rekiuti, which for several years now has been our overall pick. And that is more conventional in the sense that it's a box of bon bonss with different shapes. You have dark chocolate, you have white chocolate. Each filling is distinct. It's not like this more monolithic, you know, um, ganaches with different flavors that you would get out of the mison deco, but it is a very refined version of a filled box of chocolates. And I I I do think that it is a crowd-pleaser because it has familiarity, but also it is heightened in a way that is very obvious.

Rosie Garin: So, this is like a farmtotable style person. They shop organic. They maybe grow mushrooms at home. They hike. They're basically like back to the land foodies.

Gabriella Gersonen: Yeah. Yeah. I had mentioned Rakiudi. They're California brand Bay Area. And so what that means in culinary parlance is that they have relationships with farmers and they are sourcing herbs from farmers. They are using local and seasonal ingredients. That's also true on the other coast. We have Ragged Coast Chocolates, which is a mainbased brand.

Rosie Garin: Love them.

Christine Sir Cleette: Okay, Rosie.

Rosie Garin: I know. I know. I'm I'm I'm I'm completely impartial.

Gabriella Gersonen: There's a certain rusticity to Ragged Coast, which maybe is a little bit implied by the name, but they also have a commitment to using local ingredients when possible. They do project a certain uh like salt of the earth vibe and main folksiness. in main folksiness. And yes, the chocolates are are unfussy, but also so elevated.

Christine Sir Cleette: Yes. Can I add one more to the back to the lander?

Gabriella Gersonen: Um, the dandelion single origin truffle,

Rosie Garin: the ones with the truffles, right? Okay.

Gabriella Gersonen: It's all about the land. It's about the cacao bean, where it's from, how it was grown. It's a very modern presentation. Each chocolate looks exactly the same except they have a different design painted on top to differentiate them. They're these beautiful perfect cubes and and quite big. But at the end of the day, it's really about the crop. It's really about the crop and how it was processed.

Kyra Blackwell: Can we taste?

Christine Sir Cleette: Yeah, let's do this.

Rosie Garin: We've waited.

Kyra Blackwell: This is the only reason I showed up today, clearly.

Christine Sir Cleette: All right.

Rosie Garin: All right. Um, Gabby, where should we begin here?

Gabriella Gersonen: Okay, that's a really good question. Uh perhaps with just like the baseline, the dandelion, because this one is 100% chocolate.

Christine Sir Cleette: Okay. And so we're opening it up. And what do we have?

Rosie Garin: Oh my lord.

Gabriella Gersonen: Aren't they stunning?

Kyra Blackwell: Those are gorgeous. Because they're so simple. It's like they're

Christine Sir Cleette: just little squares of chocolate with these beautiful gold kind of embossed tops that are like different designs. So beautiful.

Rosie Garin: Stunning.

Kyra Blackwell: Very classy. Um, all right. So, let's look at the legend.

Gabriella Gersonen: Okay. So, you've got Tumacco, Colombia, Costa, Emoral. Let's just stop right now. We've got some from Colombia, Ecuador, Bise, Tanzania, and Madagascar. Oh my.

Christine Sir Cleette: Okay.

Rosie Garin: I want Madagascar.

Kyra Blackwell: You're doing Madagascar. I will do You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do Bise.

Christine Sir Cleette: God, these are big. These are big pieces of chocolate.

Gabriella Gersonen: They are. They're really indulgent. Okay. All right.

Kyra Blackwell: I'm more like into the texture. It's got this like wonderful crisp chocolate shell and then you go into the ganache and it's the most creamy beautiful and it's kind of like to me it's almost like coffeeish. It's a little bit like burnt. Not in a bad way but like toasted, you know?

Rosie Garin: God, it settles in in a It's so nice. Yum.

Christine Sir Cleette: I would serve this with a little espresso.

Kyra Blackwell: That would be like the perfect dessert. Just kind of put one on the

Gabriella Gersonen: very very classy. Let's do Ragged Coast next.

Christine Sir Cleette: Ragged Coast. Beautiful.

Kyra Blackwell: I love that this one comes with a little map. It's like a topographical map. Is it the coast that that we're seeing?

Gabriella Gersonen: Yes, I think it must be. So, okay. So, we got caramels. We've got milk chocolate. We've got dark chocolate.

Christine Sir Cleette: These are pretty. If you are used to that American style chocolate like you were saying earlier, I feel like this would be one that visually you would feel good about.

Kyra Blackwell: Yeah. And I I love it when shapes get thrown into.

Rosie Garin: Okay. So, I'm doing lemon

Christine Sir Cleette: and it's shaped like a heart. M I'm getting a lot of white chocolate in it, but the inside is really good. It I'm not getting a huge amount of lemon out of this, actually. But it's good. It's really good.

Kyra Blackwell: It's not as refined. It's good, but it's not as refined as some of the other ones.

Christine Sir Cleette: The last one we're going to try here is this stick with me. This

Rosie Garin: cute cutie box. And this has a big stamp on it that says made without nuts.

Kyra Blackwell: These are like little jewels.

Gabriella Gersonen: They are.

Christine Sir Cleette: They're little round fancy jewels. My kids would freak out over this. They're shiny. They're kind of like gorgeous.

Kyra Blackwell: Okay, so what are our options here?

Gabriella Gersonen: Okay, so you've got a lot of options.

Rosie Garin: That looks like a yuzu. That orange yellow one looks like yuzu.

Kyra Blackwell: I'll go for yuzu.

Christine Sir Cleette: Now there are flavors in this one. Do you love that?

Kyra Blackwell: That's the yuzu.

Rosie Garin: It's like kick you in the face. Yuzu.

Christine Sir Cleette: Wow.

Kyra Blackwell: It is.

Christine Sir Cleette: I mean, so that's not for everyone probably. But

Rosie Garin: if you don't like yuzu, this is not

Kyra Blackwell: I'm going to do the house dark one because I'm feeling like going traditional chocolate. It's so pretty. Okay, let's see.

Christine Sir Cleette: Oh my god, this is so good.

Gabriella Gersonen: Believe it or not, even after trying like hundreds of chocolates for work, I still am like a little girl. I'm so excited to

Kyra Blackwell: dig into these.

Christine Sir Cleette: This is very special. I love how um again similar to the dandelion, it has a really thin delightful shell and it's a little bit softer to me. It's really really nice.

Rosie Garin: That's so nice.

Kyra Blackwell: Yeah.

Christine Sir Cleette: If you were throwing a dinner party and you wanted to wow your guests with something amazing at the end of it, I would serve one of these.

Kyra Blackwell: Mhm.

Christine Sir Cleette: Okay. All you need is one passion of fruit.

Kyra Blackwell: I love fruit and chocolate. Gabby, this was one of the better days of my life. So, thank you so much for joining us to talk about chocolates and to take us through this tour. This was really, really fun and I hope that it will help some people out for February, Valentine's Day, wedding, anniversary, birthday.

Gabriella Gersonen: Big gifts. It's been a pleasure.

Christine Sir Cleette: It was mine. Thank you.

Christine Sir Cleette: Rosie, are you in a chocolate coma?

Rosie Garin: I am bliss out. That was a treat.

Christine Sir Cleette: That was that was super fun. So, what are you taking away from this episode?

Rosie Garin: I think for me, one of the things that was most heartening is recognizing or realizing that there are so many options that are good, high quality options for folks with dietary restrictions, particularly vegans. And then that whole box of stick with me chocolates that were nut-free and not just nut-free, but like had that badge right on the top safe. I could go in without worry and that's really nice.

Christine Sir Cleette: Those are great. And so those are really great options. Also, if you don't know who you're gifting to, if you don't know if they have allergies, that might be a good choice. So, I love that. I also love that a lot of people who don't have allergies really like the vegan chocolates. That's that's pretty interesting for me. My big takeaway is that I'm not going to be a kermagin about the high price of these boxes. It really helped to understand the level of care and quality that's going into a lot of this box chocolate.

Kyra Blackwell: The last thing for me, I think, is that, you know, these are incredibly high-end. We're very lucky to have tasted these. There's also the old standbys that are standbys for a reason and classic. And then there's grocery store chocolate. And then there's bars. There's so many things you can reach for if you're not feeling good about reaching for something at a higher price point.

Rosie Garin: Somebody Yeah. If you like it, you like it. And those also, they all have their place. So,

Christine Sir Cleette: love it. That's it for us. We will be back with a new episode next week. Thanks for listening.

Rosie Garin: Bye.

Christine Sir Cleette: The Wire Cutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Garin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Mattie Maziello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marian Loausano, Alicia Eup, Rowan Nisto, Katherine Anderson, and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wire Cutter's deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Fman is Wire Cutters editor and chief. I'm Christine Sirette and I'm Rosie Garren. Thank you for listening. Have you bought anything recently that you love? It could be a wire cutter pick or not. It is a soft closed toilet seat. Oh,

Rosie Garin: what a followup to box chocolates.

Kyra Blackwell: Wow.