May’s a Month of Many Celebrations

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Despite the current cold snap, we’re now in May. May is the start of summer, and also the start of the dreaded “exam rush”. It’s also the month that all Star Wars fans celebrate the 4th (“May the 4th be with you”), and it’s also EUROVISION time!

Plus this May we’ve also an extra bank holiday to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III, giving us three UK bank holidays. In addition, for the first time since Bucks Fizz won Eurovision, Eurovision is being held in the UK, in Liverpool; home of The Beatles.

To mark these events, we’ve pulled together a series of ‘Coronation Craft Chocolate‘ gift boxes that celebrate chocolate makers from across the United Kingdom and cocoa beans grown all over the Commonwealth.

We’ve also joined forces with the amazingly brilliant ANNALISA BARBIERI; chocolate correspondent for The Observer, to pull together a Eurovision box. Annalisa has selected five bars to represent past great Eurovision hits: So we’ve bars from Stranger (Ukraine), Table (Liverpool), Puchero (Spain), Bonnat (France), and Georgia Ramon (Germany). And we’re donating 10% of all proceeds from the box’s sales to The Trussel Trust during its first month of sale.

We are also holding a Eurovision-themed tasting on the 11th May at our Farringdon offices where we’ll be tasting (different) bars from all the makers selected by Annalisa …and a few more bars from Choco Del Sol (Germany), Kankel (Spain), and Ruket (Italy). We’ll explain why we’ve picked these bars to represent their countries, and explain why Germany (still) has so few craft chocolate makers, but Spain is taking off. Plus we will recommend, and try to take you on, a ‘craft chocolate road trip’ that starts with ice cream in Ferrara Italy and culminates with the Eurobean Chocolate Festival in Schloss (Castle) Rochsburg in Lunzenau, Germany.

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Coronation Craft Chocolate Collections

In case you’d missed it, the UK (and some other places) has a new monarch. And the coronation of King Charles III will be taking place next week.

Whether you’re a royalist who’s excited to celebrate, or a republican whose only interest is the bank holiday, you should grab some craft chocolate!

We’ve put together a couple of collections of British-made craft chocolates, representing the four nations of the United Kingdom:

But King Charles is also the head of the Commonwealth; a family of nations around the world, many of which can be found at cacao-growing latitudes. So we’ve also curated a hamper of bars made with cocoa beans sourced from several of these great origins:

A perfect collection for sharing a world of diverse flavours. Would be a great addition to your coronation festivities!

As part of the festivities; the ‘coronation quiche’ has been announced.

Spinach, beans, and tarragon maybe aren’t natural bedfellows for chocolate! But after you’ve had your slice of quiche, you can absolutely savour some pieces of great craft bars.

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Eurovision

Craft chocolate is wonderfully international, uniting people and places around the world. Sounds a lot like what the Eurovision Song Contest is all about too!

We’re using this month’s Eurovision event as an opportunity to celebrate craft chocolate making in Europe (…and a couple of other places too).

As part of the celebrations, we’ve partnered with Annalisa Barbieri, The Observer’s chocolate correspondent, to curate a collection of bars to represent some of the participating countries.

And for the whole month of May, 10% of all sales of this box will be donated to Annalisa’s nominated charity; The Trussell Trust.

Read more about Annalisa’s thoughts and feelings about each of these bars in this week’s ‘Notes On Chocolate‘ column on The Guardian website.

If you’re in London on May 11th, come along to our tasting room, where we’ll be celebrating Eurovision with some chocolate, songs, and competition!

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Kisses from Ukraine

Ukraine won last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, but because of the ongoing war, the UK is hosting this year’s competition on their behalf.

But despite the enormous challenges, our friends at Stranger Craft Chocolate have been creating and shipping amazing chocolate in Ukraine.

Please show your support for Stranger, and Ukraine, by picking up one of their collection boxes. A portion of the sales of these will be donated to the Prytula Foundation, a charity supporting the Ukrainian resistance.

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Thanks as ever for your support.

Keep savouring!

Spencer

p.s. If you’ve other topics you’d like to see us cover, please leave a comment below; we’ll see what we can do!