KitKat Muscat of Alexandria

The box tells you that two fingers contain 114 calories.

This particular KitKat has been in my refrigerator for about a month waiting for me to work up the desire to sample it. It's not that I think it's going to be bad necessarily, but rather that you don't just develop an sudden desire to eat a grape-flavored candy bar. Let's face it, grape is a flavor that belongs in juice, hard candy, chews, gum, and even possibly cakes, but it doesn't feel right in chocolate. Muscat, by the way, is a recurring favorite in Japan. It's not as popular or used as often as chestnut or green tea, but it disappears and resurfaces with regularity.


I was in a particularly adventurous mood after lunch today and decided to finally take the plunge. The bars are white chocolate tinted a pale lime green with a white cream filling. They smell vaguely of grape juice and pretty much taste like it as well.They're sweet, but not overbearingly so. Mainly, it's just a weird combination of texture and taste when you experience grape flavor in a wafer.

The grape taste isn't artificial, but it's a bit too strong to seem natural. The ingredients state that "muscat sugar powder" is used to flavor the white chocolate. Even though muscat are green grapes, these remind me of the large, round, tough-skinned (semi-expensive) purple grapes with you can get in Japanese markets. I'm guessing that dehydrated grape powder can intensify the flavor and make this more like grape juice concentrate in flavor than real grapes.

I have to give Nestlé credit for not trying to mix actual chocolate with grapes because that could have been a very bad combination. This is an interesting bar, but not the sort of thing one might want to consume regularly. It's more of a conversation piece than a satisfying snack, but it's good in an unusual way. Buy a box, split the 4 fingers with some friends and talk about your impressions. You're most certainly not going to hate it. You just might not love it.

This is also reviewed at Snack Love.