Cocoa heaven

Chocaholism is one of the few ‘holisms’ that has left me unscathed — workaholism being another. I’ll admit to an upward curve to any graph of my consumption, but I would point to its other axis — the increasing quality of the choccy I’ve been able to get my sticky fingers on — as the cause. In the 1970s Bournville-slathered profiteroles proliferated unchecked and unloved but if, in the 1980s, Thorntons seemed like a good thing it was because it was, then. The 1990s saw the late onset of maturity, and a move from Godiva to Leonidas. In the Noughties, I became ever so sophisticated and wanted only Fauchon but, darling, you have to go to Paris and the divine New York store’s closed for refurbishment. And now I’ve alighted from my gilded, choccy-plated coach-and-four into the warm, chocolate-breathy embrace of paul.a.young’s Islington boudoir and I think I’ll stay here for ever and ever. But, as I said, luckily I’m not addicted.

It was those blighters in Brussels who, not so long ago, threatened to require Britain’s yeoman chocolate-makers to label their output as ‘vegelate’, on account of their use of fats other than cocoa butter. (That’s what they said in the Daily Mail, anyway, and that’s the next best thing to being true.) There’s been a lot of Nesquik under the bridge since then, however, and now we are blessed with some of the finest chocolatiers to be found anywhere. A number of them have formed the Academy of Chocolate to promote the appreciation of ‘real’ chocolate, which they rightly distinguish from ‘chocolate confectionery’.