Notes on chocolate: a stylish start-up from Rotterdam

The Rotterdam-based Heinde & Verre is a relatively new chocolate label in the craft chocolate scene, launched five years ago. The two people behind it – Jan-Willem Jekel and Ewald Rietberg – had very different jobs before one day, on a skiing trip, they decided to make chocolate. I always love these sorts of details.

Heinde & Verre means ‘near and far’ in Dutch and they chose this name because they use local ingredients, mixed with those from far away. Which is pretty much the way it is when you make chocolate, given that the beans come from around the equator.

The packaging is as close to an unboxing experience as you could hope to get from a bar, a cardboard window ‘reveal’ containing two individually packaged slabs of 35g of chocolate, which tells you that’s all you need to eat in one sitting.

All the flavours I tested – I threw myself at five – were unusual, but I kept going back for more. It is the sort of chocolate that starts, and perhaps ends, conversations. The thing, however, was the incredible creaminess of the chocolate. This may be in part due to the sunflower lecithin. Their strapline is ‘natural rich chocolate’ and rich is the right word: every bar packs a really flavoursome punch. My fave – which shocked me – was the Mylk 55%, which contains banana. The Dutch Speculaas was not my thing, but if you like this spicy cookie – and I do not – you’ll go nuts for it. The very limited-edition 61% milk was very dark – just a dash of milk, but goddammit I just kept going back to that banana one. Each bar is 70g/£6.95.

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