About
For more than a decade, I lived with my family in Latin America. It was there that I learnt about, and fell in love with, chocolate.
Our first years were spent in the outskirts of Quito, among the beautiful peaks of the Andes. I worked as a volunteer (getting-in-the-way-helper) to Jeff, a local chocolatier. He was a man with incredible knowledge and experience and he taught me to respect the chocolate, to “feel” it and to work along with it. Art as much as science. He set me off on my way to an unhealthy and joyous obsession.
We bought weird and wonderful fruits in markets, and we visited cacao growers in their tiny Amazon plantations. We spent time with people for whom the cacao pod is much more than a just a means of generating an income: cacao is part of a latino culture, an element in a spiritual connection to land and to ancestors.
When we moved to Peru, into the heart of Lima, the noisy, self-assured food-capital of Latin America, we were surrounded by people who take flavour, texture and the look of food very seriously. I think I was inspired by that environment to be serious about what I was doing – I needed to up my game.
By the time we arrived in Costa Rica, Isolina Chocolate was a going concern. Through Covid lock downs I spent my time playing with flavours, I refined what I wanted Isolina to be and I started to sell my product in markets and local shops when we were free again.
We are now back in Dorset. Isolina Chocolate (named after our favourite restaurant in the Barranco barrio of Lima) is an attempt to bring all that I have learnt back to my studio in our home county. My ingredients are ethically sourced, my packaging is, as much as is possible, of low environmental impact and I hope that there is a little essence of Latin America in each box.
