Join us for an interactive chocolate tasting with award-winning author and investigative journalist Isabel Vincent. Isabel’s latest book, Dinner with Edward: The Story of an Unexpected Friendship, is a memoir of her deep five-year friendship with a lonely widower, and tells of their weekly dinners, prepared by Edward, and the wide-ranging advice he shared with her. […]

This week at Cocoa Runners we’re all about Canada! This Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving, and we here at Cocoa Runners are certainly thankful for a lot that comes out of Canada. Any list of the world’s greatest Craft Chocolate makers will include the likes of SOMA, Palette De Bine, Qantu, Sirene and DesBarres (and some […]

Few industries have as powerful a discovery mechanic as music enjoys with radio DJs, mix tapes and now playlists. How else do you first come across a new band, a new album, a new song? Before the internet had come up with the “Viral Marketing” the cool kids were doing this for music via mix […]

Philosophy, Religion and the Sacred Cacao Bean. In this philosophical talk and Craft Chocolate tasting, we’ll be looking at what makes chocolate truly divine, or perhaps something even better. Philosopher Julian Baggini has just published a book on the greatest food movie of all time, Babette’s Feast, and Julian will be applying ideas from that […]

This week we’d like to congratulate a number of chocolate makers who have entered, and won, multiple awards at the Great Taste Awards — in particular Fjak and Tosier (ladies first), Standout, Firetree and Solkiki swept the boards. To celebrate we’ve pulled together an award winning box (see below) and highlighted a few other awesome […]

Tim Spector is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College, a craft chocolate aficionado, and one of the driving forces behind the crowded Covid-19 app. He is also passionate about fermentation and its importance to our gut health. During this Craft Chocolate in Conversation with Tim, we’ll delve into Tim’s just released book, Spoon Fed, […]

One of our mantras at Cocoa Runners is that “Craft Chocolate tastes better, is better for farmers, better for the planet and also better for you”. It is pretty easy to “show” people that Craft Chocolate tastes better.  They just need to try some There are also LOTS of studies showing how direct, transparent trade leads […]

From having been “the food of the goods” (Theobroma Cacao), chocolate has, sadly, often fallen to being a commoditised, mass market ingredient in confectionery. In some ways the “commoditisation” and “mass processing” of food, of which chocolate has been subsumed, has been great. For most of history the majority of humankind has been at risk of […]

What a morning pleasure it is to enjoy a delicious cup of Speciality Coffee with an amazing bar of chocolate. And so we’re delighted to be joined by three-time UK Barista Champion & three-time world finalist, Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, for a morning of pairing different coffees with chocolate. We’ll also taste more chocolate alongside Maxwell as […]

Geography has never been my strongest subject.  So even though I know that cocoa only grows within a band of 0-20 degrees of the equator, I struggle to identify which of the following countries does NOT both grow and craft chocolate and wine: The USA Bolivia Chile Australia The answer is Chile (in the USA, […]