Tien Giang Vietnam Explorer Series | 70% Dark Chocolate Bar | 63g

Bullion Chocolate are one of only a handful of UK companies, and the first in Yorkshire, to craft bean-to-bar chocolate. Taking a hands-on approach, they set out to discover and unlock the ‘hidden gold’ in cacao: the distinct flavour nuances that beans from carefully selected farms can produce, depending on the terroir (a French term used to describe the environmental factors that affect a crop's characteristics, including unique environment contexts, farming practices and a crop's specific growth habitat).

As a result, the single origin batches that they craft are strictly limited in number and represent a never-to-be-repeated opportunity to sample the unique notes and aromas produced by cacao from a particular time and place.

Bullion Chocolate believe chocolate should be better. It’s important to understand that not all chocolate is created equal. We’re so used to what chocolate has come to be, we have little understanding of what it could be.

Bullion exist to create chocolate without compromise – crafting bars that are built of the fundamentals that they believe create a better tasting chocolate for you and for the world.

Their Gold Standard means the chocolate is always made from bean to bar, their cacao sourced with transparency and integrity, the bars are ingredient-led and flavour driven and free from palm oil and emulsifiers. Their supply chain is slavery-free and they are committed to sustainability.

There are a lot of problems with the traditional chocolate industry. The environmental impact of manufacture, guaranteeing fair pay and fair working conditions for farmers, and variation in the quality of cacao are all problematic within the mainstream industry.

In sharp contrast, Bean-to-Bar chocolate makers are involved at every stage of production. All the way from the cacao bean to the finished bar. This ensures the sustainability, ethics, and quality of the chocolate produced. And it also ensures that it tastes heavenly!

The first job when the beans arrive from the farmer is to hand sort them, preparing them for the roast. This process involves removing spoiled beans and any foreign materials. If hand sorting through endless kilos of cocoa beans sounds time consuming, well that’s because it is!

The next stage is roasting, to bring out the natural flavour and personality of the cocoa bean- every variety is distinctly different and will be roasted accordingly. Roasting drives off volatile acids from the beans and converts amino acids and sugars into tastier fully formed flavour compounds through the browning process.

The final step before wrapping is tempering, which gives chocolate structure and a nice shine. It involves heating and cooling down the chocolate and allowing the cocoa butter to crystallise. It’s this crystallisation which is crucial to giving chocolate its glossy finish

Naturally, all of our Craft Chocolate makers' dark chocolate is vegan, and we have many different sorts to choose from! In addition, some of our suppliers also make delicious oat milk and cashew nut milk chocolate, so vegans get a milk chocolate option!