Big players sell 'chocolate flavour' not chocolate

Celebrity ‘chocolate-man’ Willie Harcourt-Cooze whose journey to the Venezualan cloud forest to learn how to farm and roast cacao and turn it into chocolate was watched by millions, told a Dubai audience, major chocolate-makers are more concerned with making money than they are sourcing and selling realchocolate.

Harcourt-Cooze, who was one of the speakers at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, held in Dubai’s InterContinental Festival City from 5-9 March, said many of the renowned brand names that mass produce chocolate “were producing chocolate for margins.

“I call it chocolate flavour. It’s not real chocolate,” said Harcourt-Cooze.

Cooze, who began exploring the Venezuelan Andes in 1993 before discovering the worth of its cacao plantations, now owns a chocolate factory in Uffculme, Devon, in South West England. His trials and tribulations from souring the bean to creating the chocolate and finding buyers were captured on the UK television show Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory.

“It’s rare to find somebody who will source, make and directly sell the chocolate to the end user – I do, and I still passionately control the entire process.

"People came to me and offered to make desserts, I just had to agree to put my name on them - I refused. I've only just started working on my own desserts now.

“I’ve still got some of the same people working for me now that started with me on day one and that I trust with the chocolate," he said.