During our Virtual Tastings one of the most common questions is “what about organic chocolate?” It’s a great question.  But answering it is complicated and confusing.  Here’s why Craft chocolate is all about bars that taste better, are better for you, and better for farmers and for the planet.  Organic farming, fruit, vegetables, meats and […]

This weekend was meant to be about CocoaSwimmers.  CocoaRunners had planned to swim “Castle to Castle” with the wonderful Mike, Becca and Chocolarder team in Cornwall to raise money for the RNLI.  This sadly isn’t happening (next year!). Instead we are going to explore the links between chocolate and water.  There is a longer version of this […]

We passionately believe that small batch, single estate craft chocolate tastes better, is better for you and is better for cocoa farmers and indeed the planet. It’s made with high quality, simple ingredients (often just cocoa beans and some sugar) and it’s a treat where a few squares are brilliantly satisfying. Artisan makers work directly […]

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES We’ve written this post with two objectives. The first is to help clarify a bunch of terms and descriptions which loosely fall under the heading of “taste”. We hope that this clarification will deepen your enjoyment and ability to engage with craft chocolate by helping you articulate, and therefore identify, those sensations […]

From elevating your mood, to reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and pancreatic cancer, it seems like there are more and more benefits to eating chocolate. It’s no secret however that plenty of chocolate (mainstream milk chocolate in particular) contains huge amounts of processed sugar. Although sugar has never been in the running for health […]

One of the great pleasures of single estate chocolate is the way that different makers and farmer can coax out so many flavours from their beans. It’s the antithesis of mass produced chocolate where the aim is – to be kind – uniformity and sameness. Single estate is all capturing the essence of the bean. […]

High quality artisan chocolate, like good wine, comes with a range of flavour profiles to suit every palate. Not surprising when you consider it is a fruit and, like wine, goes through a number of different processes in production, all of which can affect its flavour. In fact it is one of the few products […]

If you’d asked anyone about the health benefits of chocolate twenty years ago, they would probably have laughed at you. Chocolate was seen as the cause of many health issues from acne to obesity.  But recently – and coinciding with the rise in popularity of artisan chocolate – there have been more and more scientific […]

If you’d asked anyone about the health benefits of chocolate twenty years ago, they would probably have laughed at you. Chocolate was seen as the cause of many health issues from acne to obesity.    But recently – and coinciding with the rise in popularity of artisan chocolate – there have been more and more […]