Cocoa Encounters

09/12/2025

Thailand & Singapore, here I come! ✈️🍫
I’ll be bringing back a hand-picked selection of craft chocolate — and hosting an online tasting for UK tasters at the end of January.

I’ll be picking up distinctive flavour profiles, regional varieties, and bars that express the terroir and creativity of the makers I meet.

Because I’m hand-carrying everything home, you won’t be charged until the kits are confirmed safe and sound.

£39 + UK postage — reserve now, pay in early January. Booking Link in

Hope you can join us and follow my journey here to see who I visit… and what ends up in your tasting kit!

08/12/2025

🍫A Christmas Craft Chocolate After-Dinner Platter 🍫

🎄The Christmas season officially started for me on Monday at our Louth Chocolate Tasters Christmas Club night.

This was our 9th Christmas special, and while it gets harder to keep things fresh, this year I focused on sharing and pairing. Instead of presenting pre-curated pairings, we created a communal platter of chocolate alongside Christmas savoury, sweet, and alcoholic festive fayre.

The photos don’t quite capture the joy of experimentation — the laughs, the silent appreciation and unexpected flavour and texture combos — but if you’re thinking of creating something similar, here’s what our after-dinner platter included:

🍫 Chocolate & Confections
• Luisa Abram (Brazil) – Extra Creamy White
• Kairi Trinidad – Orange 50% Dark Milk
• Standout – 58% Öko Caribe with caramelised goat cheese
• Solkiki – 65% blended dark milk with Belizean allspice & elderberry pâte de fruits
• Friis-Holm – 50% O’Payo Milk
• Orfève – Quillabamba Apple & Mace
• Duffy’s – 72% Indio Rojo
• Terroir Artesanal – Brown Butter Truffle
• Solkiki – Candied pecan dragées
• Solkiki – Tumbled whole white mulberries

🧀 Cheeses from
• Queso de oveja con flores
• Norwegian Gjetost

🍊 Festive Extras
• Homemade marzipan (70:30 vegan)
• Panettone
• Hawkens Grantham Gingerbread (Lincolnshire)
• Fresh tangerines

🍷 Pairings
• Elysium Black Muscat
• Pedro Ximénez Sherry

Plus we had an extra special finish with the Gingerbread truffle this time enjoyed on its own…the perfect end to our very full year of craft chocolate.

Looking forward to our 10th year starting in January🎄🍫✨

A huge thank you to for hosting us 🍫🙏❤️🎄

29/11/2025

Georgian style hot chocolate made from scratch…had to be authentic!

If you are not a member of Louth Ants and Nats you can still attend the talk and tasting as a visitor.

Professor Lynda Payne is talking about the coffee houses with some local links and I’m talking about the taste and history of cacao being used at the time.

Not to be missed.

29/11/2025

Hot chocolate Georgian style prepped and ready for our lecture and tasting on Tuesday night.

Pairing up with Professor Lynda Payne for the history element but I’m talking about taste and the origins of the cacao. I was unable to get hold of Jamaican beans but with more than a little help from it’s been made from scratch from Oko Caribe beans, sugar, vanilla, Ceylon cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, aniseed, black pepper and annatto.

I’m not claiming to be an expert on Georgian hot chocolate making…possibly not the best shaped balls either 🤨 but the research has been fascinating and I’m always eager to talk about the origins of chocolate flavour so very much looking forward to it.

26/11/2025

Congrats to , , and !! 👏👏

A new primary school workshop activity gave some very interesting results today! 🤔🤔🍫🍫

We were using craft chocolate bar packaging to learn about DT (design and technology) considering the branding, appeal, product protection, consumer information and environmental approach of the packs.

I took a bag full of different packages - about 60 in total - giving a random selection of packs to each of the 8 groups asking them to consider them as a group and choose the pack they judged the best.

5 of the chosen best packs were from Solkiki!!! - one girl said the pack she chose looked like “a party” I loved that reasoning! 2 were from Aroko Chocolate principally for the appealing use of colour, construction and making information inside. 1 was from for its style, strength and information about the process on the front.

There were 2 extras with special awards as one group couldn’t chose just one! So also chose an old pack from Bean Geeks (sadly no longer making) and which stood out because of the picture of the farmers on the back.

Great exercise…I’ll certainly be repeating that one!

21/11/2025

I thought I knew what good chocolate was… until I had my WOW moment 🍫✨

We’ve all had that first taste that changed everything — the bar that made us stop, smile, and think “… this is something else”

I shared mine in this reel a bar from I found in my local deli — now I’d love to hear yours.
👇
What was the chocolate that made YOU go “wow”?

If you share your WOW bars in the comments we can celebrate those amazing tastes and the people behind them and encourage others to seek them out.

20/11/2025

Because the best gifts are delicious and educational 🍫📚

Link in Bio to choose from a tasting box with video guidance to certified tasting courses.

Tasting boxes and micro-learning courses also available on

18/11/2025

It’s Tuesday and it’s week.

U is for Urubamba - a Peruvian river, an Amazonian tributary, and my first stop in a river-themed tasting being put together for my forthcoming chocolate book club and our reading of The Amur River by Colin Thubron.
🍫📖
Thubron journeys from west to east - at the age of 80! - tracing Asia’s lesser-known “Amazon” , so my pairings will follow suit, beginning in the Upper Amazon: birthplace of both the river’s might and of course Theobroma cacao.

So I’m starting with the Urubamba, rising in the Andes southeast of Cusco, flowing toward its meeting with the Apurímac to form the Ucayali River. (I was hoping someone had picked a Ucayali bar that I could tangent). The Urubamba valley is home to our beloved Chuncho cacao.

🇸🇪Today’s bar isn’t crafted in Russia or China (that would have been too much to ask!), but in Gothenburg, Sweden where the Göta River meets the sea—another river mouth.

📖Thubron’s journey starts… dramatically (no spoilers), and I’m hoping for something equally arresting here:

🍫The aroma already promises adventure: deep forest fruits, fleeting florals—something you could keep sniffing through miles of rough terrain.

On diving in: a green, herbal opening—blackcurrant leaves—that ripens toward purple fruit, and merging into an intense fruit loaf warmth , and finally surfacing into a gentle, shimmering sweetness that lingers, ebbs and flows.

A pretty good choice for a long journey!

More rivers to come for book club 🌊🍫📚

17/11/2025

12/11/2025

Do you know your chocolate?

If you ask people what the three types of chocolate are, most people will get it wrong – they will probably say white, milk and dark

But it’s not about the colour of the chocolate, its about the purpose:

There are three types:

Confectionery, Premium and Craft

You need to know this so that you can see through the marketing and find the chocolate that meets your needs

🍫a sweet treat

🍫🍫chocolate to make us feel better about ourselves

🍫🍫🍫or great tasting chocolate that challenges us to think about who has been involved in that flavour development process from tree to bar.

I’ve just written a blog about these three types using these three bars just to help remind us how craft chocolate is so different. You can access my blog from the links in the bio

or take a look at my short online chocolate education courses and tastings. Could be the perfect gift 🎁🎄

07/11/2025

Good to finish the week with some positive feedback.

I know budgets are tight for schools and that’s not going to change any time soon so I feel very privileged to be asked into any school to talk about chocolate and where the flavours come from and so I do my best to make sure they get the best experience…and the best local chocolate of course ! 😉

Thank you.