Chilean chocolate, bar by bar

Ask a Chilean abroad what they want brought back from a trip home and the list very often has a chocolate bar on it, usually a specific one, often with the size specified. Chileans do not ask for "some chocolate". They ask for a 250 gram Sahne-Nuss, a bag of Super 8, and whatever Trencito will fit in the suitcase.

We pack those bars in Davie, Florida every day, and chocolate is one of the biggest shelves in our warehouse. This guide goes through it the way Chileans think about it: bar by bar, with what each one actually is, what it is for, and which one to put in the cart first.

Why Chile takes chocolate seriously

Chile eats more chocolate per person than any other country in Latin America. That is the finding of the United States agricultural attache's 2024 report on Chile's sweets and snack industry, which also names Sahne-Nuss and Trencito as the country's most popular chocolate brands and puts Nestlé Chile at 36 percent of chocolate retail sales, the largest share of any company.

Most of the bars below are Nestlé Chile's, but most of them did not start there. Several of Chile's classic chocolates and cookies came from Hucke and McKay, two old Chilean houses whose brands Nestlé Chile took over. That is why the Chilean Nestlé shelf looks almost nothing like the Nestlé shelf in an American supermarket. These are Chilean bars with Chilean histories, and Chileans treat them that way.

Sahne-Nuss: the family bar

Sahne-Nuss is the one. Creamy milk chocolate packed with whole roasted almonds, in a thick bar that gets broken into rows and passed around the table rather than eaten alone. It was born in 1924 at Hucke and turned one hundred in 2024. The name is German, Sahne for cream and Nuss for nut, which is a fair summary of the bar.

It is also, by a wide margin, the most ordered chocolate we ship. Over the past twelve months Sahne-Nuss went out in more than two thousand separate orders, more than any other chocolate on our shelf, and the average order held nearly two bars.

160 g or 250 g?

It comes in a 5.64 oz (160 g) bar and an 8.82 oz (250 g) bar. The 250 gram bar is the one our customers order most, and it is the best selling size in Chile too. If you are buying for a household, buy the big one. If you are buying a gift for someone who has never had it, the 160 gram bar makes the introduction without committing them.

Pasas al Ron

Sahne-Nuss Pasas al Ron is the same bar with rum raisins added, chewy and a little boozy behind the almonds. It is the grown up member of the family and comes in the 8.82 oz (250 g) bar.

Bitter

Sahne-Nuss Bitter swaps the milk chocolate for a darker 51 percent cocoa chocolate and keeps the almonds. It is still smooth rather than austere, which makes it the right bar for somebody who says they only like dark chocolate. Also 8.82 oz (250 g).

Super 8: the lunchbox wafer

Super 8 is crisp wafer layered with a light cream filling and covered in milk chocolate, in a small 1.02 oz (29 g) bar that disappears in about two bites. It came out of McKay, and it is the chocolate most Chileans associate with school: the one in the lunchbox, the one bought at the kiosco, the little corner kiosk, on the walk home. Nestlé's own explanation of the name is the eight layers of wafer and cream inside. Chileans have other theories, and they enjoy them.

Super 8 is our second most ordered chocolate, and it sells the way it is eaten, in quantity. The bars come individually wrapped in a bag of 12 or a box of 24. If you would rather have it in bites, Super 8 Balls put the same idea in a bag.

Trencito: the milk chocolate bar Chilean kids grow up on

Trencito is plain milk chocolate, and that is the point. Smooth, sweet, nothing bitter, nothing inside it, in a 5.29 oz (150 g) bar that breaks cleanly into squares. It is the first chocolate bar a lot of Chileans remember having to themselves, and it shares the top of Chile's popularity list with Sahne-Nuss for exactly that reason: it tastes like being eight.

If there is a child in the house, this is their bar. If there is an adult in the house who grew up in Chile, it is probably theirs too, and they will not admit it. Trencito comes as a single bar or a case of 14, and Trencito Balls are the bite size version.

Chokita: the one that used to be called Negrita

Chokita is a crunchy vanilla cookie with a vanilla cream center, covered in chocolate. For more than sixty years it was sold as Negrita. In July 2021 Nestlé Chile renamed it Chokita, from chocolate plus the affectionate Chilean diminutive, and said at the time that the recipe was not changing. If you are looking for Negrita, this is it.

It is a cookie more than a bar, so it lives at onces, the Chilean late afternoon tea, as much as at the candy bowl. Chokita comes in a bag of 10 (300 g) or a bag of 20 (600 g).

The rest of the shelf

The big four are where most people start. They are not where the shelf ends.

• Triton. The Chilean chocolate sandwich cookie, two cocoa cookies with a thick cream filling and a softer bite than an American sandwich cookie. A McKay classic.
• Costa Rama. Chocolate sticks built from fine strands, so they break light instead of snapping. In chocolate or white chocolate, in a 4.06 oz (115 g) box, and dangerous next to a cup of coffee.
• Chocman. Soft sponge cakes with a manjar filling under a chocolate coating. Manjar is Chile's milk caramel, and this is where chocolate and manjar meet.
• Vizzio. Whole almonds in chocolate from Costa, in a 4.23 oz (120 g) bag. The candy bowl version of the Sahne-Nuss idea.
• Chocolate Malva. Malva is Chilean for marshmallow, and these are soft colored marshmallows under a chocolate coating from Ambrosoli, in a 6.91 oz (196 g) bag made for passing around.
• Chocolada Cuchufli. The cuchufli, a crisp wafer stick filled end to end with manjar, here covered completely in thick chocolate. Ten in a 7.05 oz (200 g) pack.

The full range, bars and bonbons and chocolate cookies together, lives in our Chilean chocolate collection, and the Nestlé Chile classics are gathered in our Nestlé collection. Costa fans can go straight to the Costa collection.

Which Chilean chocolate to buy first

If you are buying for yourself and you grew up in Chile, you already know, and this section is not for you. If you are buying blind, or buying for somebody else, here is the order we would go in.

• Start with a 250 gram Sahne-Nuss. It is the bar Chile is proudest of and the one our customers order most.
• Add a bag of Super 8. Individually wrapped, easy to share, and the one that makes a Chilean adult say "I haven't had one of these in years".
• Add Trencito if there are kids. Add Chokita if there is a tea table.
• Save Pasas al Ron and Bitter for the second order, once you know which way the household leans.

Getting chocolate through an American summer

This is the part nobody else will tell you, and it matters more than which bar you choose. Chocolate melts in a delivery truck. We ship from South Florida, and for a large part of the year the ground service that is perfectly fine for crackers is a gamble for a chocolate bar.

So here is how we handle it. Chocolate is covered by our No Melt Guarantee when you choose Express or Overnight shipping at checkout: if it still arrives melted, we refund or replace it. Overnight orders also get ice packs, which last about a day in transit, so in hot weather Overnight is the safest choice. Standard shipping is not covered for melting. When it is simply too hot to ship safely, we may hold a chocolate order until the weather breaks, or contact you with options. The details are in our shipping policy.

Once it arrives, keep chocolate somewhere cool and dry, out of the sun and away from the stove. If a bar does soften on a hot day, let it firm up again before you open it.

Keep exploring

Chocolate is one shelf of the Chilean pantry. Our complete guide to Chilean food in the USA covers the rest, from marraqueta to completos. Manjar explained properly is the other half of Chile's sweet tooth, and our Ramitas and salty snacks guide covers the other side of the snack table. For sourcing questions generally, we keep a detailed answer in where can I buy Chilean products in the USA.

And if you are ordering Chilean chocolate for the first time: one 250 gram Sahne-Nuss, one bag of Super 8, Express shipping. Come back and tell us which one went first.

Looking for a Chilean chocolate we do not carry?

Tell us which one. We are Chilean, we know exactly which bar you mean, and we answer these ourselves.