Made exclusively from Carenero Superior cocoa from Venezuela. A cocoa producing a full bodied, chocolaty flavour profile with notes of nuts and spice. The cocoa beans are sourced from Barlovento which means ‘windward’ and refers to a coastal stretch of Venezuela east of Caracas where the humid winds blow continuously onto the land. Carenero refers to the port it was once shipped from and Superior to the quality of the beans. Approximately 50% of each cacao nib is cocoa butter.To make cocoa powder you need to remove some of this butter and I do this on a pair of antique cocoa butter presses. I make the chocolate exactly as I do for the bars then physically press the butter out of the conched 100% cacao. This leaves a cake that has to be milled into a powder and mixed with raw cane sugar to make Hot Chocolate.

My 100% cylinders are my personal choice, I use them to make my Aztec hot chocolate. They’re also naturally vegan. Created from Baracoan beans (Trinitario) from Cuba that offer notes of honey to this perfectly balanced fruit and chocolate medley. Milk or Water? It’s entirely up to you, I use water, so did the Aztecs. There’s already enough smooth and creamy cocoa butter to make a really wonderful hot chocolate but you can try it with a plant-based dairy alternative, and decide your own favourite.A beautifully flavoured single origin, dark chocolate bar from Willies chocolate with crystallised ginger and organic lime essence. Created from fine flavour cocoas by WIllies chocolate from the island of Java in Indonesia providing a dark chocolate with soft caramel and mouthwatering berry notes. In 2008 I set up Britain’s first bean to bar chocolate factory for hundreds of years. I had been a cocoa farmer in Venezuela for over a decade, and I was itching to take the next step and make chocolate. It seemed to me that the world had lost touch with what real chocolate was, and I wanted to put this right. I wanted to make artisan chocolate with pure beautiful flavours that perfectly reflect the flavour notes of the beans. Making my luxury hot chocolate is a very lengthy process. Yet getting to enjoy such full-bodied, silky, luxurious hot chocolate and share it with fellow chocolate lovers like you, makes the extra effort worth every single second!

To start with everywhere I went, people said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t get into manufacturing,’ but the more they said this, the more I realised that I could never make the perfect chocolate unless I did. Willies mission on the show was described as wanting to create the best chocolate in the world, direct from the cocoa bean, a brave move at a time when no one else in the UK was doing so. Willie's passion and sheer determination certainly resulted in putting his chocolate on a par with some of the best chocolate in the world. How it all began It was my first miraculous taste of the hot chocolate made from the beans at El Tesoro, my farm, that first inspired me: opening my eyes and my heart to REAL chocolate. Ever since that first taste I’ve been devoted to exploring and sharing the wonders of the world’s great single estate cacaos. Ever since then I’ve been experimenting and discovering the best processes that allow the pure flavours of each and every bean to sing and shine in whichever form of chocolate suits it best. As the creator of your luxury hot chocolate, It’s my duty to equip you with the knowledge you need to make the absolute most of your experience drinking it… once it’s out of the factory, it’s over to you…My approach is very different. I conche for three or more weeks – not hours or days – at low temperatures. This allows the acidity to be removed without damaging the precious flavour notes of our fine cacaos. No need for lecithin or vanilla. We conche until two people agree the taste is perfect. When the beans are fresh it will take longer. Taste not time is what matters. A flavour filled, single origin chocolate bar bursting with summer fruits. Created from a mix of Trinitario, Forestero & Criollo cocoa beans from the world renowned Millot plantation in Madagascar. The most fruity bar by Willies chocolate.

To make cocoa powder you need to remove some of the cocoa butter that makes up approx. 50% of the cacao nibs. I choose to leave in around 25% of the cocoa butter, this helps to give my luxury hot chocolate such a wonderful silky smooth texture. Retaining this much cocoa butter also means that my Luxury Hot Chocolate is 100% vegan, adding milk powder isn’t necessary. Actually one of the best ways of telling if a chocolate is good is by looking at the ingredient list. If you can see vanilla, it is there to cover up the fact that the beans are not good. It creates an overall “house” taste but in my chocolate it would cover up all the precious flavour notes. If you see lecithin it is because it has been made in an industrial continuous production process. Willie's plantation was planted with 50,000 trees of the Criollo cultivar. The Criollo is one of the best quality cocoa types available, producing lower yields than many other cultivars but offering so much more flavour. It is also one of the least robust cultivars and so one of many reasons for its higher price when used for making chocolate.

Preview

A fruit and nut chocolate bar with credibility by Willies chocolate. Created from single origin, Criollo cocoa from Peru, combined with plump rasins and whole, crisp hazelnuts. Milk or Water? It’s entirely up to you, I use water, so did the Aztecs. There’s already enough smooth and creamy cocoa butter to make a really wonderful hot chocolate but you can try it with milk, dairy or plant-based, and decide your own favourite.