Chocolate is a fruit product.Chocolate is
Cocoa is a fruit seed, and it tastes of where it grew, which is why our Madagascar is sharp with raspberry and our Peru is not.
We buy beans by the sack from six farms, roast them in the back of the shop, and the only other things that go in are cane sugar and sometimes cocoa butter. No lecithin, no vanilla to cover a bad roast, no milk powder standing in for milk. A hundred grams takes four days, most of which is a granite wheel grinding very slowly while we do something else.
A properly tempered bar snaps rather than bends, and the break is matt rather than shiny. That is the only test worth knowing.
Madagascar, Sambirano.
Sharp. Raspberry, lemon peel, almost no bitterness.
Peru, Piura.
Soft and nutty. Cashew, brown sugar, a long finish.
Tanzania, Kokoa Kamili.
Fruity and odd in a good way. Plum, red wine, a little tannin.
Vietnam, Ben Tre.
Dark and spiced. Tobacco, dried fig, a touch of smoke.
Dominican Republic, Oko Caribe.
The friendly one. Banana, honey, the bar we give to people who think they dislike dark chocolate.
How a bar is made
Sorting.
By hand, on a tray. Flat beans, mouldy beans and stones come out. Nobody enjoys this part.
Roasting.
Low and slow, different for every origin. Too hot and everything tastes the same, which is how most chocolate is made.
Cracking and winnowing.
The shell blows off in a draught and what is left is nib.
Conching.
A granite wheel grinds nib and sugar until the grit is gone. Three days, running day and night.
Tempering.
Heated, cooled and worked on marble so the fat sets in the right crystal. This is the part that makes it snap.
We post within the UK from October to April only. In summer it arrives as a puddle and we will not pretend otherwise.
What we will not do
- Cocoa beans
- Cane sugar
- Cocoa butter, in the milk bars only
- Whole milk powder, in the milk bars only
- Vanilla, which is almost always covering a bad roast
- Soy lecithin
- Vegetable fat in place of cocoa butter
- Beans we cannot name the farm for
- Flavours added to hide the origin
“I came in for a present and left with a bar of the Tanzania, which tasted so much like red wine that I made my husband try it with his eyes shut.”
Come and taste five origins before you buy any of them. That is the whole point of having a shop.