What Happened to Plain Old Hershey's?

Hershey's, the makers of every kid's favorite chocolate bar, has officially gone upscale. They recently started selling a new line of gourmet chocolate called "Cacao Reserve by Hershey's." Hershey's markets the bars as coming from the world's finest cacao beans, which might be a bit of an overstatement but I can still buy it. The descriptions on the bars, though, enter territory once reserved for pricey bottles of wine. Here's the description from the 65% Premium Dark Chocolate bar:

Slow-roasted cacao beans develop the full-bodied flavor in this deep dark chocolate. Delightfully robust.

Pair elegant dark chocolate with well-crafted cabernets and California zinfandels when spending an evening with your friends.

I'll start by tackling the first paragraph. The description borrows heavily from terms usually used for coffee or wine. When hearing "slow-roasted," one rarely thinks of chocolate--it's a term associated much more with coffee. Clearly Hershey's is trying to appeal to the gourmet coffee drinker by using the same terminology used to describe the concoctions of their favorite baristas. Next, Hershey's uses terms generally applied to wine or coffee: "full-bodied flavor" and "delightfully robust." The metaphor of "full-bodied" reminds me of the new words that Adrienne showed us that describe wine, such as "broad-shouldered" and "muscular." The terms combine the flavor of the wine with the texture, giving the chocolate "body" similar to the way that category is used with wine.

The next paragraph of the description crosses the line from gourmet to absurd. At this point, Hershey's drops its subtle allusions to wine and makes a direct appeal to wine aficionados by practically ordering them to serve the chocolate with cabernets or zinfandels. The real sin is that Hershey's has the audacity to suggest not just any old wine, but a "well-crafted" one. Is there really a wine out there not good enough for a chocolate bar? I think that is the difference between advertising and simple pretentiousness. The final suggestion, to make the chocolate bars the centerpiece of a "evening with your friends," strikes me as just kind of ridiculous. I'm willing to bet that Hershey's could do a survey of everyone who buys this chocolate and not find anyone with the intention of using it in that way. Still, though, I see what Hershey's is trying to do with this sort of description. By romanticizing a simple chocolate bar in this way, I think Hershey's can make a successful push into the gourmet, wine- and coffee-drinking demographic.