Meet the maker
Contour Chocolate
About Contour Chocolate
Contour Chocolate was founded at the end of 2020 by James Nichols, a professional chef turned chocolate maker. Before he officially established Contour Chocolate, James had been experimenting over a number of years with different beans, different flavours, and developing his roasting skills. His mission? To produce chocolate from one bean variety (which has enough character to stand out on its own while also working well with inclusions), and to present the chocolates in a way that creates a special experience. Currently, James is still making and selling chocolates by myself, but he’s looking to expand very soon.
For Contour’s packaging, James took inspiration from terrain maps and the use of contour lines which are used to represent elevation of a given area. He worked with a designer and graphic designer using contour lines to create a contemporary pattern for the packaging, to link the impact of terroir on the flavour of the cocoa beans. Quality and sustainability is important for all parts of Contour, all the way from the ingredients to the packaging. The boxes which the discs come in is fully recyclable, and lot of work went into how the discs are presented inside.
How they became makers…
James left school at 16 and trained as a professional chef for 3 years, with his third year specialising in patisserie and bakery. It was then that James learnt how to work with chocolate, and started making filled chocolates and decorations for desserts. After college, James then went on to work as a Chocolatier in London – after a few months, he started thinking about how he would do things if he had his own chocolate business, and started considering making chocolate from bean-to-bar. James took inspiration from filled chocolates, and wanted to craft naturally flavoured bean-to-bar chocolates which were presented in a way to create that excitement that you feel when opening a box of filled chocolates.
Contour’s Sourcing
Contour Chocolate sources their beans through Crafting Market, and works with Ingemann Chuno Esencia beans for all of their products.
Ingemann started in 2007 as beekeepers, and diversified into the cocoa sector in 2013. Today, they work with more than 1000 producers, collecting wet mass from the farmers gate and using a centralised fermentation and drying process.
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