Chocolate

Pure chocolate

Enrich your truffles, cakes, sauces, gravy and casseroles with Venezuelan Black chocolate bar. Made from 100% pure Venezuelan cacao - the finest, rarest most expensive cacao in the world - it is produced by Willie Harcourt-Cooze, from Channel 4’s Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory.

Two single bean bars are available - Venezuelan Black, Rio Caribe Superior and Venezuelan Black, Carenero Superior, as well as a limited edition, Venezuelan Black, Hacienda El Tesoro.

The bars are made using a simple and traditional process that avoids over-refining and captures the unique flavours of the world’s best criollo beans. Venezuelan Black is delicious and distinctive, as well as being versatile and adaptable.

Willie Harcourt-Cooze - known as Organic Willie - is the only small cacao grower-producer in the UK. He has been farming cacao for more than a decade at the Hacienda El Tesoro, his beautiful farm in the breathtaking heights of the Henri Pittier National Park.

The cacao trees are cultivated without the use of pesticides or chemicals.

Waitrose offers a diverse and exciting choice of quality chocolates with a higher cocoa content. We have nurtured our relationship with innovative producers and buy our chocolates from select producers and small specialist chocolatiers. Try our Chocolate Masterclass (below) to help you enjoy premium chocolate.

Chocolate masterclass

The world’s best chocolatiers train for years, but you don’t have to. Here are five foolproof ways to spot (and enjoy) premium chocolate like a bona fide gourmet:

1. Read the ingredients

Premium chocolate has smaller amounts of sugar and fat than a standard bar. Chocolate is made from a fruit – the cocoa bean – and the flavour is appealingly subtle, so long as it’s not masked by sugar and fat.

2. Don’t be tempted to eat your chocolate straight from the fridge

Let it warm up a little. The flavour is best at room temperature.

3. How does it look?

Chocolate should be evenly coloured and glossy without being waxy. Variations in colour are the result of improper storage or, worse, poor tempering (that’s the melting and cooling process) during production.

4. Close your eyes and inhale: what do you smell?

If it’s soft fragrant notes, perhaps along the lines of citrus, molasses, treacle, almond, liquorice, or even tobacco, you’re on to a winner.

5. Eat a chunk, or two

Did the bar break smoothly with a clean snap? That’s good. Can you only manage to eat a few pieces in one sitting? Premium chocolate is intense enough to satisfy your tastebuds quickly, so you eat less without trying.