Our Story
Flavour chocolate began when our seasonal jobs ended in 2016, and we longed to stay on the island and we were offered a house. We (Chris & Nicola Loye, husband & wife team) decided to make Harris gin chocolates for Christmas time proving a hit with the locals at the Christmas craft market in Tarbert selling out.
Our artisan chocolates are all hand tempered. We don't have any giant tempering machines. It's a lengthy & messy process to get the perfect tastes and shine to our chocolates. We originally made them in our home but now have a chocolate production room at our restaurant and a small shop at Talla Na Marra which has allowed us to expand and employ 3 young islanders enabling Nicola to work from home with our 2 young daughters Freya 2.5 & Ada 1year.
We use sustainable chocolate brands such as Casa Luker who are a Colombian based company which use "fino de aroma" cocoa beans - this is the top 8% of cocoa beans produced worldwide.We feel it is extremely important to know the origins and working ethics of the farms when selecting the brands we use and have visited cocoa farms in Colombia and Guatemala. Due to Brexit delivery issues, we changed our milk and white chocolate suppliers to Stewart and Arnold which uses African beans and is part of Barry Callebaut cocoa horizons project as is the Ruby chocolate we use. We blend our own 78% Flavour dark chocolate which is also vegan.
Our most popular filled chocolate is the white chocolate shell filled with Harris gin & pink Grapefruit. Chris's favourite filling is the passionfruit and chilli - we are now growing our own chillies and other herbs; we hope to use them for our fillings very soon. We are expanding our product selection and aim to sell our own roasted coffee beans, infused honey, chilli sauce and our homemade crowdie will be available soon.