Chocolate is incredibly and wonderfully versatile. It adds magic to everything from biscuits to brownies, cakes to cookies, mouses to moles, ice cream to curries, bars to ‘bon-bons’. In many of these chocolate creations, chocolate is (ab)used as an ingredient; it’s used as a vector for flavour and sensations, and chocolate is UNBEATABLE at this. […]

Here in the UK our days are becoming noticeably longer: Now the clocks have gone forward, we have more daylight. And with more daylight we all suddenly seem to have more of that magical ingredient; time! So for the next two weeks we are going to reflect on the importance of TIME in craft chocolate. […]

There are lots of important dates and calendar related events this week and weekend: This Sunday, the clocks go forward in the UK, Daytime is now officially longer than night time (we’ve passed the March equinox), Easter is ALMOST here (and Passover starts Saturday night), Lockdown restrictions continue to ease (e.g. the Hampstead ponds for […]

‘Easter’ and ‘chocolate’ evoke contrasting associations. On the one hand are Easter eggs, chocolate bunnies, chicks and other chocolate concoctions. …On the other hand is the idea of giving up, fasting, and abstaining from the likes of chocolate, wine, and other indulgences. The two are obviously tied together with the idea of ‘breaking your fast’ […]

Easter Weekend is now less than three weeks away, and the UK is (hopefully) now starting to emerge from what seems like a VERY long third lockdown. So we’d like to invite you to join us in celebrating with two great new tastings with firstly WINE and secondly GIN (and tiramisu) (see below for more […]

Easter is rapidly approaching: We are delighted to launch our Easter offerings – along with a quick recap of the history of chocolate and Easter below. And we are also very excited about a pair of Fine Wine and Craft Chocolate Tastings that we are launching with Corney and Barrow on Thursday 25th March and […]

Globally we spend over $100Bn a year on chocolate, and about the same on coffee.  Yet whereas specialty coffee accounts for over 10% of coffee sales in almost every country drinking coffee, in no country does craft chocolate account for even 0.1% of chocolate sales.  This is despite both specialty coffee and craft chocolate really […]

One of the questions we most commonly get asked at the end of our virtual tastings is, “Is our chocolate Fairtrade?” That’s a fantastic question – and it’s a great sign that so many people are thinking about ethical consumption. But for chocolate, Fairtrade is a complex issue, and it’s worth exploring some of the […]

Amongst warm-blooded mammals, humans have a number of unique traits, including: We communicate with extensive vocabularies and a wide range of sound We run on two legs holding our heads high (birds aren’t mammals and lizards are cold-blooded) We can detect flavour via both our mouths and our noses (through our sense of smell) All […]

See how the addition of milk changes a chocolate bar! These pairs of bars are all made by the same maker using the same beans – the only difference is the cocoa content and addition of milk. Notice the differences in texture and mouthfeel, and see how the sweetness of the milk changes the beans’ […]