York Cocoa Works News
Welcome to our news, thoughts and experiences in the world of cocoa and chocolate.
This blog is brought to you by Sophie, our founder, as she shares more about our Chocolate making journey and reflections on the industry and our chocolate making vision.
Our story so far has been full of lots of insights into the world of our favourite product as we discover there's so much more to learn in order to build and shape a chocolate industry we can be proud of.
York Cocoa Works is our open chocolate manufactory as we endeavour to build an open, accessible and transparent chocolate making facility. We welcome your thoughts and input so together we can make better chocolate
YORK COCOA WORKS NEWS
I've just returned from the most amazing week exploring the cocoa industry of the Solomon Islands. Enormous thanks to the farmers and community of this beautiful set of Islands as well as the International Trade Centre who made the trip possible.
We spent the week with the team at Cocoa Town in their factory centre in Atlanta, Georgia with cocoa farmers and aspiring chocolate makers sharing our chocolate insights in their Bean to Bar Bootcamp.
We're excited to share our Chocolate Manufactory is now open and making chocolate!
With work well underway at 10 Castlegate we've been getting prepared by discovering our...
Our journey and adventure into chocolate making has been an interesting and long one, at times tedious and unnecessarily slow and at others overwhelming in choices, ideas and opportunities.
Every so often I come across a memento of one of our old products, a...
COCOA AND CHOCOLATE NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Some of our thoughts and observations of the latest industry happenings
It's Chocolate Week — the UK's annual celebration of fine chocolate. Here's how York Cocoa Works is marking the occasion with tastings, workshops, special menus, and meet-the-maker sessions.
In February 2026, we won a lot of Kampura cacao — a light, heirloom-status cacao from a regenerative agroforestry farm in Izabal, Guatemala — at the Cacao of Excellence Ed Seguine Auction at Chocoa in Amsterdam. This is its story.
Did you see this news about the quest for “perfect” chocolate? For the thousands of...
THE CHOCOLATE CULTRALIST
Exploring Chocolate heritage from York and other consuming influences
Hot chocolate is one of the world's oldest drinks — a ceremonial Aztec beverage that travelled through Georgian chocolate houses to the café at York Cocoa Works. Here's the full story, and why it shapes the way we make ours.
From Mary Tuke's defiance of the Merchant Adventurers in 1725 to Agnes Pilopaso's cocoa cooperative in Guadalcanal — the women who built York's chocolate industry have always been here. It's time their story was told.
Chocolate maker and chocolatier are not the same thing — and understanding the difference changes how you think about every bar you eat. Here's what sets them apart, and why it matters.
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