I've been doing several weird culinary sequels lately, and here's one more. While in the candy aisle recently I noticed some more new-to-me flavors of licorice. From the Australian Darrell Lea company. Which I covered back on January 20, 2017. Anyway, I obviously bought 'em, and gave them a try. This time is was the sugar-free strawberry kind, and the mango ones.
I'll try to limit the repetition here, since I did go into some aspects of the Darrell Lea company in my previous post, as well as about the history of licorice itself, and its health detriments. With that in mind, our story starts with Harry Levy, an English-born man who moved to Australia as a lad. Levy started making and selling confections, or, chocolates and candies, in the Sydney area in 1917. By 1927 he founded a company to do this. Online sources say the bureaucrat in charge of registering the company name convinced Harry Levy to call his business Darrell Lea instead of Levy Brothers. At some point during this time Harry Levy (legally?) changed his name to Lea. Since we all know about the significant history of anti-Semitism, it appears that Harry Levy chose a less Jewish-sounding surname, and company title, so bigots didn't refuse to buy his products. But, there's something else kind of weird about the company name. Darrell Lea was Harry's youngest child, the fifth one in fact. Were the older four children a little offended that their dad named it after their youngest brother, and not for one of them? Moving on, the Darrell Lea company flourished. One of its flagship brands was called "Rocklea Road," their version of the Rocky Road chocolate, nut, and marshmallow combo chocolate flavor. Still, the company was going through hard financial times in the 21st century. In 2012 it was reportedly hemorrhaging money, so the family manager (the actual person Darrell Lea) stepped down. (I'm not sure if this was the original Darrell Lea, or perhaps that man's son or grandson of the same name.) The business was sold to the Quinn family-owned VIP Petfoods company, and they were able to get the company back into the black, largely by closing down stores, laying off employees, and eliminating about 500 of the company's 800 products. In 2018 the Quinns sold Darrell Lea to Quadrant Private Equity for $200,000,000 (I assume this in in Australian dollars). Currently, Darrell Lea's biggest sellers are their chocolate balls, blocks, and bullets, and their various kinds of licorice. They even combine these two specialties, as they make a chocolate licorice. Their licorice was first made in 1957. They made a mistake during the manufacturing process, so Darrell Lea gave it away for free just to get rid of the bad batch. However, the folks who got these free samples really liked it, so Darrell Lea started making it that way deliberately, and of course then charging money for it. Darrell Lea also has become more eco and labor friendly over the years. In 2018 the company began buying sustainably sourced cocoa, and in 2020 they stopped using palm oil. Aside from homes for intellectually disabled people, and youth homes, a current charitable campaign of Darrell Lea's involves saving the bilby, which is a type of bandicoot. (Yes, like from the old video game.) You can see video of one, even encountering a Darrell Lea chocolate bilby, on the official website, if you're so inclined. (And you should be--they're oddly endearing.)
Darrell Lea sugar-free strawberry licorice: These were red tube shapes, about 5 cm. by 1 cm. (or about 2 inches by .5 inches). The tubes were smooth, too, and not ribbed, like American licorice often is. They were chewy, and had a pleasant, strawberry flavor. And I didn't notice their sweetness being off, or disappointing, despite being made with sucralose as the sugar substitute. Overall I thought the sugar-free ones were about as good as I remember the regular ones being, although, admittedly, it was over 5 years ago. All in all I would rate these as being more than solid licorice, and better than one of the U.S. licorice kings, Twizzlers.
Darrell Lea mango licorice: These were the same size, shape, and smoothness as the previous kind--the only difference was that these pieces were orange-yellow in color. The texture was once again chewy, but smooth and firm. The taste was sweet and fruity, and was recognizable as mango. I think I liked these a bit more than the sugar-free strawberry ones--maybe the sugar makes a distinction. So I enjoyed these, and would recommend them to folks who like licorice. These two additional examples have strengthened my conviction that Darrell Lea makes very good licorice. Now if I could just find some of their chocolates, to rate those.
No comments:
Post a Comment