Waking up to a new year by savouring chocolate and smelling the coffee

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First and foremost, we’d like to wish you all a happy new year, and thank you all again for your support.

Secondly, to help you ‘wake up’ to 2023, why not join us for a virtual tasting of speciality coffee and craft chocolate on 21st January? We will be savouring, sipping, sniffing, and slurping four different coffees and five craft chocolates (from Fresco, Zotter, Chocolat Madagascar, and Chocolate Tree).

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In partnership with Square Mile Coffee Roasters, we’ll explore why it is that coffee’s stimulant; caffeine; can give you that ‘jolt’, whereas chocolate’s stimulant; theobromine; gives you a more gentle stimulation (which paradoxically also calms you down by increasing vasodilation, i.e. expanding your blood vessels).

It’s all pretty extraordinary, given that caffeine and theobromine are chemically very, very similar; they’re both methylxanthines, but caffeine has one extra ‘methyl’, and it’s this extra methyl in caffeine that crosses the blood-brain barrier to increase adrenaline, and turns off your adenosine receptors (thereby stopping you going to sleep).

And to further complicate matters, your body breaks down caffeine into theobromine. And dark chocolate does also contain some trace elements of caffeine.

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Coffee and Chocolate Tasting with Square Mile

During our tasting session, as well as pairing craft chocolate and speciality coffee, we’ll also explore the dramatic impacts of different bean varieties, terroirs, fermentations, and roasts of both coffee and chocolate. For example; we’ve a couple of bars from Fresco to try that are crafted from the same harvest (and fermentation) but taste completely different because they’ve been roasted and conched with different profiles.

And if you can’t join us on the day, we’ll be videoing the session for catching-up with later.

Order your tasting kit to get your place in the session:

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And we’ve also some other great coffee and chocolate pairings, both beans and capsules, that we’ve developed with Colonna Coffee:

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But if caffeine isn’t your thing, why not make yourselves a great hot chocolate?

We’ve a full kit to welcome in the new year, complete with mug and whisk, as well as a range of great drinking chocolates from Chocolarder, Pump Street, Original Beans, and Menakao:

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For those thinking further ahead, we also have some Valentine’s Day tastings; an in-person one with Hedonism Wines and a virtual one with The Wine Society.

And you can find all of our upcoming regular events on our calendar page:

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Finally, we’ve managed to import some more bars from Ukraine, so please do consider supporting Tetyana, Raslan and their family at Stranger, while also showing solidarity with Ukraine (for every box we sell, we donate £10 to a Ukrainian charity selected by Tetyana and Raslan).

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As always, thanks for your support.

Spencer

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