Hotel Chocolat employees can enrol themselves on to Hotel Chocolat’s School of Chocolate ‘Chocolate Diploma’ which is a year-long online course designed to help improve chocolate knowledge.  The modules start at ‘The History of Chocolate’ and go right through to ‘Chocolate Production’.

For the final task in the diploma the students had the really hard assignment of spending a day at Hotel Chocolat’s factory in Cambridgeshire where they were given the brief to design, and then make their own chocolate!  The day started with the chocolatier’s talking through how they design chocolates from the brief, what ingredients they use (all natural!) and why they use certain products (who knew that green chocolate contained spinach or nettles?!).  Then the fun began with making the chocolates – tempering chocolate is far harder that the experts make it look!!

The chocolate that was chosen in the ‘Nibblatron’ group was “Dark Chocolate with Wasabi” and lots of fun was had making the chocolate with plenty of discussion on how much wasabi should be included, and what the decoration should look like!  The director’s had the (hard) job of tasting all the diploma chocolates, and ones that are good enough may even appear in a future Tasting Club box – watch this space!

Final approvals just received from the Saint Lucian government for our bean to bar manufactory – it’s been a long and careful process because it is set within the Unesco World Heritage environment of the Pitons in Saint Lucia.

Our ‘renaissance man’ country head, Phil Buckley, has been working on the design plans for 3 years and they are amazing – it will be the world’s greenest chocolate manufactory, architecturally beautiful, focussed uniquely on rare and vintage cocoa and designed from the outset for visitors to fully engage in each sensorial stage.

Being sited amongst the cocoa groves on our own estate means that we will be able to make micro batches and fully release the unique terroir of Rabot Estate and Saint Lucia. Physically linking the growing and fermentation of cocoa with roasting and chocolate making means that our chocolatiers will have all the variables of flavour at their disposal – like a winemaker with his own winery set amongst the vineyards.

Here is the press release from the Saint Lucia government.