Welcome to our new website, which is finally here, albeit in a not totally finished format. Hopefully you’ll agree it’s a huge improvement and will bear with us while we catch up with all the technical tweaking needed to deliver the site we want, and we hope you’ll find easier …
The bloggers and twitterati have been buzzing recently, fuelled by Amano’s ‘guess the origin’ competition. A new Amano origin chocolate bar is interesting news enough, but rumours and guesses about a rather famous source have had connoisseur’s hearts racing for the last few weeks.
A visit to Florence to discuss the upcoming ChocoAndino event in Colombia with Monica Meschini had been on the cards for a while.
Icelandic ash had been getting in the way, but finally last week I managed to make a short trip, with no danger of getting stuck in Italy. (Shame!) Two days of fast and furious chocolate visits and tasting followed.
Last week saw the first of our new ‘Connoisseurs Club’ get togethers at our regular monthly tasting venue, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.
Our new advanced format was a chance to let our hair down a little and pull the new, odd and unusual out of the chocolate cupboard.
Today saw the launch of UK premium chocolate chain Hotel Chocolat’s new high end chocolate shop, Rabot Estate. I managed to pop down for the 11am opening, try some new St Lucia chocolate and suffer from some sneaky rum in my cocoa tea!
On 26th March, the BBC’s Panorama series ran an exposé of bulk cacao farming in West Africa – the source of the cocoa used in most ‘chocolate’ confectionery. Did the programme go after the right targets though, and was it wholly accurate?
Seventypercent’s editor foolishly takes on an ‘F1 chocolate bar challenge ‘ from Duffy Sheardown, owner of new English chocolate Red Star Chocolate. Follow our race calls and progress here.
Red Star Chocolate, a new UK artisanal bean to bar chocolate maker has started production in Cleethorpes, in the North East of England. Kate Johns of Nudge and I donned our winter woolies and set off on a mission in search of Britain’s newest fine chocolate maker.
Raymond Blanc hits our screens with his favourite chocolate recipes, but the BBC’s inept editorial policies make it little more than eye candy.
Amedei have a few new products on the way, which come along at the same time as a packaging overhaul of their entire range. The redesign will see the whole of the bar range brought into line as 50g bars, the format currently used for the current Chuao, Porcelana and …
A new origin chocolate from Amano, and this time a rather unique one. ‘Dos Rios’ is made from cacao with outlandish bergamot, rose and spice notes, created by Nazario Rizek in the Dominican Republic using an experimental fermentation technique. Oh, and Seventypercent played a small part in bringing it to life as well …
Spirits and chocolate matching at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Wednesday 14th October 2009 What a spectacularly unique, informative and fun event this proved to be! On arrival I was surprised for us to be seated around a boardroom table as I was expecting a more informal mingling- type event. …
Another day, another train to and fro Manchester… But there was one further event I felt I couldn’t miss: Pacari chocolate at Melt. Pacari is an Ecuadorean producer who does it all: growing, processing, manufacture, in Ecuador. It’s a nice way of keeping chocolate profits in country of origin and, …
What was I thinking? I mean making micro-batch chocolate is a great experiment. I appreciate the nuances and the art of making a great chocolate. There are many venerable institutions who have and will continue to make great chocolate. So why am I embarking on this venture? Its not like …
So after the first day of Chocolate Unwrapped I was thoroughly “chocolated” but still hadn’t really gone round the exhibitors yet. Thus Day 2 would be my time to focus on this. Some I already knew from past experience, such as L’Artisan du Chocolat and Melt, and thus I decided …