Celebrating the finest chocolates from across the globe

As we reported this week, the UK’s Academy of Chocolate has just confirmed its first tranche of winners for its annual awards, attracting an impressive array of entrants.

Confectionery Production was on board for the latter stages of the judging, but the early phases, which covered filled products saw everything from nut-based entries, through to a host of other exotic inclusions.

This event really is about celebrating the diversity of global artisan confectionery, with entrants hailing from right across Europe, to Asia and the US.

This included several UK-based businesses including Paul A Young, Hotel Chocolat and the Highland Chocolatier receiving honours, among the 46 countries represented.

For our judging session last month, we put a number of milk and dark chocolate offerings through their paces, and in the main, the quality of entrants was particularly notable.

One of the most striking points was the number of entrants who had gone to great lengths to secure rare or unusual strains of cocoa for their chocolate offerings.

While on the one hand, such measures are to be congratulated in seeking to develop confectionery that is genuinely distinctive, it of course means that such products are going to be extremely limited by their very definition.

Perhaps this is the intended effect, but I can’t help thinking it’s a real shame that consumers won’t be able to get their hands on many of these products as many of them will be destined for boutique stores or a limited number of specialist outlets.

However, with growing sales in the premium chocolate segment, it might just mean some of the rarer products are given a broader production run that might just reach an eager wider audience.

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