Passion Fruit - from Brazil to Birmingham
We LOVE launching new flavours and Steve especially relishes the challenge of figuring out how to blend amazing flavours together with our fresh chocolate concept.
This blog is a little about the story of where our passion fruit flavour idea came from - we first launched it as a limited edition in February 2023 and are delighted to be bringing it back for Valentine's Day 2024!
It is the one flavour I (Giles) have been wanting Steve to develop since we started the business. I fell in love with the fruit while living & working in Brazil on Lacta chocolate (a national heritage brand like Cadbury), when just about every Friday evening, my wife & I would go to our favourite local restaurant, often with local friends Charlie & Paola, and have a caipirinha cocktail (or two if it had been a tough week, or occasionally three) – mine with cachaça (like a Rum) and my wife with vodka – it was a great way to start the weekend.
When Steve and I first started talking about the flavour, we discovered that he loved it too - as the ‘Porn Star Martini’ is the favourite cocktail he likes to make for his partner! So it didn’t take much to persuade him to try to bring this flavour alive in a chocolate.
By the way, if you’re interested in making a caipirinha, Jamie Oliver has an easy recipe here
And there is a great Pornstar Martini recipe here.
Passion Fruit or ‘maracujá,’ is a native plant of Paraguay, Brazil and Northern Argentina. Originally grown by the Aztecs, Incas & other South American Native peoples for thousands of years. The fruit’s unique flavour has notes of mandarin, orange, and pineapple.
The Passiflora or ‘Passion flower’ (Flos passionis) acquired its name from descriptions of its flower parts supplied in the Seventeenth Century by Spanish priests in South America. It was known by the Spanish as “La Flor de las cinco Llagas” or the ‘The Flower With The Five Wounds.’ ‘Passionis’ refers to (Christ’s) suffering. Perhaps as its flower resembles the face of a timepiece, the Japanese call it the clock flower. 
Steve says “It was a challenge to create a passion fruit fresh chocolate as the fruit delivers both sour and sweet notes, which is not a natural bed-fellow with chocolate! My early creations delivered a huge burst of passion fruit, but were simply too tart (almost like a sherbert lemon bomb!), it was as if the chocolate & fruit elements were fighting.
So I decided the way forward was to focus on heroing the tropical fruit aroma fusing with our signature rich chocolate. So, after creating more than 20 different recipes, Giles and I were finally happy with a much more harmonious eating experience where you get a big chocolate hit which gently gives way to a honeyed tropical freshness, leaving your mouth watering for just one more - gert lush as we say in Bristol!”
We’ve made a small limited-edition batch that launches just in time for Valentines’ Day and will sell through to the spring, or while the stocks last. We do hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
You can shop the range here
Giles & Steve