CHOCOLARDER
Mike Longman, of Chocolarder, a former chef and pâtissier, makes bean-to-bar creations of remarkable beauty and sophistication in humble surroundings in deepest Cornwall.
His most popular bar is a beautiful milk chocolate with a high cocoa content gently flavoured with gorse blossom that Longman gathers (suitably protected) from local cliffs.
This gives the bar a wonderfully sweet floral aroma and a honeyed hint that is balanced by the characterful Nicaraguan Chuno chocolate. The flavour is fantastic, but what I especially love about Chocolarder’s bars is their appearance. Longman uses intricate, beautiful moulds and pays an enormous amount of attention to the texture and composition of his bars. The result is super-shiny chocolate with a smooth melt. Chocolarder is a tiny set-up not geared to entertain visitors, but Longman has a vision for a factory/shop/café in Porthleven. For the present, that hint of gorse can transport me straight to Cornwall… Wild Gorse Flower 50 per cent, £5, chocolarder.com Chocolate Tree’s Friederike and Alastair Gower at their Scottish production centre From Bean to Bar – A Chocolate Lover’s Guide to Britain, which is published next week. That “bean to bar” phrase in the title is nicely alliterative and also describes the basic artisanal approach to making chocolate, where beans are sourced in small quantities direct from growers, or via a trusted intermediary, and the maker then takes charge of every part of the process, from roasting the beans, through grinding them and processing the resulting materials into a beautiful bar.
Along the way, I looked at the history of chocolate making in this country – which is where chocolate bars were first mass-produced – and some of the lovely things (not just bars, but filled chocolates, and bonbons, and brownies, and mugs of hot cocoa) that can be made with that wonderful substance.
The book is also a travel guide, of sorts, because in travelling the length and breadth of Britain to meet artisan chocolate makers, I found that they tend to practice their trade in beautiful and interesting places. It is not just what they make that rewards them, but how and where they make it.
Here are four of the makers that I have written about: I hope that they inspire you to seek out more. From Bean to Bar: A Chocolate Lover’s Guide to Britain (AA Publishing, £15.99) is available from books.telegraph. co.uk for £13.99