Our Ingredients

Chocolate

The world of fine chocolate is a wonderful one full of glorious beans such as criollo, trinitario, cacao nacional & carenero superior, all grown in exotic equatorial countries, each creating chocolate with very different, complex flavour notes which are also influenced by how it is grown, harvested & processed…similar to wine & quite fascinating. We work with various different fine origin chocolates for their different properties & we hope you enjoy the resulting taste sensations.

Our chocolate comes from...

Grenada

Better known as the Isle of Spice, as nutmeg is one of its major exports, there is also expanding cocoa industry on this Caribbean island, driven primarily by the efforts of Mott Green, the founder of The Grenada Chocolate Company. Mott & his team of local people make their chocolate from locally grown organic trinitario cocoa beans in a tiny solar powered factory in the north of the island. They describe themselves as “a cocoa-growing and chocolate-making cooperative producing single origin chocolate from tree to bar”. Not only is the chocolate they produce delicious with rich, complex flavours, it is also truly ethical.

We use the Grenada Chocolate Company’s 71% chocolate in our fresh chocolate ganaches, to create our house dark chocolate (blended with another 67% dark chocolate from Grenada), and it’s also our house hot chocolate which you can enjoy if you visit our café. We also stock the full range of all the Grenada Chocolate Company bars include bars with various cocoa solids contents from 60% to 100% and bars flavoured with sea salt or roasted cocoa nibs.

One of our house milk chocolates also comes from Grenada and has a cocoa solids content of 44% which is very high for a milk chocolate giving rich, cocoa flavour notes rather than being overly sweet, as many milk chocolates can be.

Venezuela

We are also huge fans of Venezuelan chocolate and over the years have worked with ethically sourced carenero superior bean origin chocolate made from cocoa bean to couverture chocolate in Venezuela by El Rey, an independent company who pay above-market prices for their cocoa beans from the Aprocao co-operative.

Supply from El Rey has been tricky in recent years, but we have been able to source another delicious milk chocolate from Venezuela that is also very high in cocoa solids at 44%.

The Dominican Republic

We work with a white chocolate made with cocoa butter from the Dominican Republic that is both aromatic & more flavoursome, (with hints of flowers & dried fruits), than most other white chocolates as, unusually, it is made with undeodorised natural cocoa butter.

Madagascar

Madagascar has built a reputation for growing fine cocoa beans that produce delicious chocolate. We work with a 67% criollo & trinitario bean dark chocolate with hints of red berry fruits, liquorice & coffee in many of our ganaches, and also when baking cakes & chocolate chip scones for our café.

We also stock a range of delicious chocolate buttons in our shop made with cocoa beans grown in different countries including;

Tanzania: an intense yet soft, fruity chocolate with 75% cocoa solids and a clean smooth finish made with trinitario beans from cocoa farmers with small holdings, of average 200 trees each, in the Kyela district in the south of Tanzania.

Ecuador: a smooth 71% dark chocolate made with the cacao nacional bean with a delicate cocoa taste plus hints of floral flavour notes and earth on the finish, characteristic of this bean type from this region.

Costa Rica: a rich milk chocolate with 38% cocoa solids made with cocoa beans sourced from a Rainforest Alliance Certified farm, guaranteeing that these beans have been grown and harvested responsibly.