Love Cocoa

Love Cocoa was the brainchild of the great-great-great grandson of Cadbury, otherwise known as James Cadbury. The idea behind Love Cocoa is being a letterbox-friendly, next-day-delivery, ideal gift to give. The bar packagings are pretty, with the prints designed to match the flavour. It has a Mast Brothers-esq feel to it, which seems very popular lately

The chocolate is made from couverture, so, as Love Cocoa is not bean-to-bar, I could tell the chocolate was more about the added flavours. The couverture is sourced from a family run business who work closely with cocoa farmers, so let's just say Love Cocoa are not using the chocolate most chocolatiers are using 

Online I found out exactly where all the inclusions came from (i.e the mint, the honey, the Earl Grey etc.) and I was quite amazed, as stuff like this - knowing where things are coming from - adds so much value to me. It was a shame not to see this on the packaging, although I do feel that I am in the minority when it comes to this type of information. Not everybody wants to see it, not everybody cares

The organic dark chocolate that Love Cocoa produces is a 70% Ecuadorian. It had a lemon-lime citrus flavour profile. As well as offering the 70% alone, the range includes an English Mint bar. This is the dark chocolate with Black Mitcham mint oil; this, my friend, is a mint that is a Summerdown single estate English mint. The chocolate was refreshing, and would be great as an after dinner thing

The Maldon Sea Salt bar, unexpectedly a dark chocolate opposed to milk, had the salt within the chocolate. It was subtle, less of a statement being within the chocolate. I can't quite remember it too well, but it definitely distinguished itself from the 70% without the salt

The milk chocolate of Love Cocoa is a 37% Dominican Republic. It alone tasted pretty tainted, which was unfortunate. The Earl Grey bar, which was made with cold-pressed Bergamot from the Brew Tea Co. was great. It had a very warm, high-class flavour

The Honeycomb & Honey bar had honeycomb infused with award-winning honey of Barnes & Webb. The packaging of this bar had been the most striking, plus the most interesting sounding

Love Cocoa is a very new startup. Inevitably there are things that could be tweaked and polished up, but so far there are great ideas. Talking to James Cadbury (the founder) he is hopeful to work from the bean to the bar, which sounds good to me! The traceability (and transparency) of ingredients is excellent