From the 14th of July until September, we are not shipping anything. I would like to explain that, because on paper it looks like the decision of a man who does not enjoy money.

What happens in the van

Cocoa butter is a strange fat. It can set into six different crystal forms, and only one of them — the fifth, if you're counting — is any good. That fifth form is what a chocolate maker is chasing when they temper: hours of heating and cooling and agitating, coaxing the fat into a tight, stable crystal lattice. It is why a good bar snaps instead of bending. Why it gleams. Why it holds its shape in your hand and then dissolves the instant it meets the roof of your mouth, which is a trick it performs because it melts at almost exactly body temperature.

That last part is the problem.

A bar that melts at body temperature also melts in a delivery van in July. It goes soft, then slack, then liquid. And in the cool of the evening it sets again — but nobody is tempering it this time. There is no maker standing over it. It sets however it likes, into whatever crystal form it can manage, which is generally the wrong one. The fat separates and migrates to the surface, where it dries into a pale, chalky film. This is called bloom, which is a lovely word for something so sad.

The bar is still edible. It is simply no longer the bar. The snap is gone. The gloss is gone. It melts differently on the tongue, which means it releases its flavour differently, which means the fruit and the smoke and the long finish that somebody spent a decade learning how to coax out of a bean now arrive muffled, in the wrong order, or not at all.

It is, technically, still chocolate. In the same way that a piano dropped from a fourth-floor window is, technically, still a piano.

What everyone else does

They ship it. I have checked. They tuck in a cold pack, which surrenders somewhere around Ohio, and they send the bar anyway. And you open it, and you look at the pale streaks, and you think: huh.

That huh is the sound of a farmer's fermentation schedule, a maker's seventy-two hours of conching, and my entire reason for existing, all going quietly into the bin.

So we don't do that. I would rather send you nothing in July than send you something that misrepresents the person who made it. That is the whole standard, and it isn't negotiable, and yes, I am aware of what it costs.

What we do instead

The shop stays open. Everything you buy between now and September is a reservation. You claim the bar. We hold it. In September it travels to you in the condition its maker intended.

This is not merely me being difficult. The best bars are made a few hundred at a time, and they vanish. Reserving is how you end up with one. Not reserving is how you end up reading about one.

And we are not going quiet. Every week through the summer, a new bar — a new maker, and the reason it earned its place. Reserve it on its own, or simply reply to any of our emails and we'll add it to a reservation you've already placed. It all travels together, in one box, in September. Nothing extra to pay.

While you're here: stop putting chocolate in the fridge

Since we are discussing bloom, allow me to save some bars.

The fridge is not a safe place for good chocolate. It is cold and damp, and when you take the bar out, moisture condenses on the surface, dissolves a little sugar, and evaporates — leaving behind a gritty crust. That's sugar bloom, bloom's equally unwelcome cousin.

Chocolate wants a cupboard: cool, dark, dry, steady, away from anything that smells. Cocoa butter absorbs odours enthusiastically and indiscriminately. It will happily take on your garlic.

If it's genuinely sweltering and you have no cool room, the fridge is the lesser evil — but seal the bar in an airtight bag, and let it come back to room temperature inside the bag before you open it. The condensation then forms on the bag rather than on the chocolate.

And one more thing

This autumn, the Top 100 stops being only our opinion. The people who have actually tasted these bars will move them up and down the list — and nominate the makers we hunt next.

We'll open it before the season starts, using what you've already tasted. Details soon.

Until then: reserve now. It ships in September.

Dima
Hello Chocolate