What We Learned (and Savoured) at the 2025 Craft Chocolate Fair

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”

— G. K. Chesterton (author)

“To taste life, sometimes you have to let it melt on your tongue.”

— Carl Honoré (author of In Praise of Slow)

Gratitude heightens awareness.

When you pause to feel thankful before eating, your brain shifts from autopilot to attention. With craft chocolate, that shift is palpable: you slow down, savour, and truly notice what you’re tasting.

In a food world driven by convenience and cost, gratitude is a quiet act of rebellion. To slow down and savour, and stop scoffing, is to step outside the logic of mass production and disposability. Saying thank you – and meaning it – to a maker or farmer is a vote for connection. As we discussed at our “Rare Beans and Bars” tasting last weekend, what’s truly rare in craft chocolate is savouring. Unlike cult wines or luxury handbags, the best craft bars in the world often cost just £5-10. They’re not scarce by design or inflated by hype – they’re accessible expressions of care, skill, and provenance. And for that, we should be grateful – and take full advantage of this remarkable treat.

That sense of gratitude becomes even more vivid when craft chocolate fans meet the makers and farmers themselves, as we did last weekend at Fidelio. All of us there – makers, farmers, speakers, and helpers alike – were deeply grateful to everyone who came, listened, chatted, and tasted their way through some truly exceptional craft chocolate.

Below, I’ve tried to capture a few of the things we learned – and the many reasons to be grateful – from the talks and tastings given by our speakers. Sadly, we don’t have recordings of these sessions, but more tastings are on the way, and we can point you toward the bars, books, and drinking chocolates we explored together.

• Thanks to Tim Spector for explaining how experimenting with as many fermented products – from kefir to tea, kimchi to chocolate – is key for gut health. And thanks for signing so many copies of his new book. Plus thanks to Tim, and Ice-cream Union, for letting us all try their new Kefir ice cream with Daily 30 and Tosier’s Colombian Chocolate.
• Thanks to James Hoffmann for kicking off Saturday with some great coffee and chocolate pairings. Like Tim, James has been a long standing subscriber – and his views on the parallels, and lessons craft chocolate can learn from speciality coffee are always intriguing. A special thanks for his help in creating the “Flavour Wave”. Also a massive thanks to Jamie Isetts, Green Coffee Buyer at Square for organising tastings with the Square Mile team to assemble the perfect coffee and chocolate pairings from 40-50 bars and a new Square Mile coffee each month, and explaining this – with three pairings, on Sunday morning too. See here for the coffee and chocolate subscription.
• We’re incredibly grateful to all our makers for supporting the fair, and we even persuaded a few of them (Mikkel (Friss Holm), Agur (Fjak), Patrick (Choco Del Sol), Juliana (Baiani), Joanna (Pump Street) and Dorothy (Neary Nogs) to hold a couple of talks and tastings. They shared a few of their iconic and latest bars while also describing the highs, lows, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced in craft chocolate. What came through in every story was a deep sense of gratitude – to the cocoa farmers who make their work possible, and to the craft chocolate fans whose support keeps it alive. Your enthusiasm and appreciation mean the world to them – and to us.
• Similarly, a massive thanks to Leslie – and Travis and Paula – for giving us the first chance to taste a range of beans, and bars, from what’s been a ten year task for him in sourcing, harvesting, fermenting, drying and shipping beans from farms his family have been working with for other three generations in Ghana. It’s an inspiring tale, and we were delighted to be the first to launch, and taste, Fruition’s first bar from these beans, and compare it with other recently released bars from Dandelion and Bullion (watch this space). We’re also working on getting some of Travis’ roasted beans (and bars).
• Rounding off Saturday was a wine pairing. And an enormous thanks to Callum and Farrah for stepping in at the last moment to explain the wines and discuss the pairings. As with the Coffee Pairings, it’s great to see how the idea of “BLIC” (balance, length, intensity and complexity) runs across wine, coffee, chocolate and so many other great foods. Each element of BLIC invites a kind of mindful attention: to notice balance, to linger on length, to sense intensity, to explore complexity. It’s the same habit that gratitude cultivates – slowing down, paying attention, and letting flavour unfold. And just as learning to swim opens up a whole world of water adventures, learning the language of flavour opens up new ways to taste, connect, and give thanks. We don’t (yet?) do a wine and chocolate subscription, but if we did it would definitely feature the pairing of Hogarth’s Buttered Toast with Naranjo’s Torantel (orange wine) – see here and here
• A massive thanks to Gen for the idea of holding a “rare” beans and bars tasting. Not only was it very popular, but it also encouraged us to think about what makes a bar (or bean) rare (see here). Rarity in craft chocolate is not linked to stratospheric prices induced by cults of scarcity. It’s about SAVOURING. So we assembled a series of “rare flights” to explore cacao genetics, different fermentations, roasts, conches and flavours side by side. Unfortunately we’ve sold out of a few of these bars like the Casa Cacao Lavado Fermentation. However you can still recreate the experience through some of the bars – including a another “lavado” fermentation bar to try from Mucho (Mexico)
• Pablo’s Ceremonial Cacao is all about gratitude and mindfulness. So it was a brilliant way to take a “breather” from a hectic fair. As we discussed, Ceremonial Cacao’s historical provenance is, to put it mildly, sketchy. In addition, as there is no certification or standards of Ceremonial Cacao, and much of the self proclaimed Ceremonial Cacao sale has some very dubious provenance. However when, as with Pablo’s Asháninka-sourced cacao, the beans have impeccable provenance and are crafted with care, that integrity can be relied on (and the flavour, and health benefits, evidenced). Plus with Pablo as host, guiding breathing, mindfulness, savouring and then bathing us with his sound gong – the experience deepens into something pretty special. See here for Pablo’s Ceremonial Cacao – and here for more thoughts on this.
• Rounding us off on Sunday evening, Dima provided an inspiring talk and tasting of Ukrainian Bars – paired with some of his Vodka for those so inclined. Stranger, Meetty and Sisters all craft FANTASTIC bars .. and it’s extraordinary how they do this given their proximity to the war’s front lines and all their other efforts (for example, see Felicity’s piece on Oleksiy of Meetty’s work in shooting down Russian drones here. We’re all extremely grateful to them for all they are doing.

We also all owe a massive thanks to the Fidelio team for their support and unfailing good humour.

A final note on gratitude: there’s even a scientific parallel for practising it with craft chocolate. Both gratitude and dark chocolate have been linked to increased activity in the brain’s serotonin and dopamine pathways – those that govern pleasure, focus, and contentment. Regular gratitude practice can literally reshape the brain’s wiring toward calm and satisfaction (see the blog for some further reading / studies). And, as Tim Spector reminded us, foods rich in polyphenols – like craft chocolate – nourish the gut microbiome, helping to lower stress hormones, sharpen attention, and lift mood. Raise a grateful bar to beneficial gut bacteria such as Lactobacillus plantarum and Bifidobacterium adolescentis and thank them for reducing stress, improving mood and more.

If you were lucky enough to join us at the Fair, I hope you discovered a few new bars to raise a toast – and a moment of thanks – to the farmers and makers who make all this possible.

And if you didn’t get the chance to join, do try the various bars, books and drinks above.

As ever, many thanks for your support!

SOURCES
Footnotes / References (with Ferment inclusion)
Fox, G. R., Kaplan, J., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. (2015). Neural correlates of gratitude. Frontiers in Psychology, 6:1491.
Macht, M., & Dettmer, D. (2006). Everyday mood and emotions after eating a chocolate bar or an apple. Appetite, 46(3):332–336.
Kini, P., Wong, J., McInnis, S., Gabana, N., & Brown, J. (2016). The effects of gratitude expression on neural activity. NeuroImage, 128:1–10.
Spector, T. (2025). Ferment: The Life-Changing Power of Microbes. Jonathan Cape / Vintage. In prior works (e.g. Food for Life, Spoon-Fed, The Diet Myth), he also emphasized polyphenols, microbial health, and diet diversity.
Ferment: The Life-Changing Power of Microbes — Penguin / Vintage (2025) penguin.co.uk+2penguin.com.au+2
Also see Tim Spector’s discussion of fermented foods, “zombie microbes,” mood, and citizen science experiments in The Independent article “From Marmite to Tabasco: the everyday foods Tim Spector says can improve your gut health” the-independent.com