Academy Awards
Each year entries are judged after the year end in January.
AWARDS 2008
The Academy of Chocolate was set up in 2005 by five of Britain’s leading chocolate professionals, united in the belief that eating fine chocolate is one of life’s great pleasures. They wanted to campaign for better chocolate and promote a greater awareness of the difference between fine chocolate and the mass-produced chocolate confectionery which most of us eat.Its aims are to:
- Encourage chocolate lovers to ‘look beyond the label’ to differentiate between chocolate confectionary and ‘real’ chocolate;
- Improve the standard and knowledge of chocolate in the UK by promoting an understanding of the ingredients of chocolate, through the chain, from bean to bar;
- Encourage the transparent sourcing of cocoa beans from the plantations, and their production in socially fair and environmentally undamaging conditions.Fine chocolate is defined as containing at least 60% cocoa solids for dark chocolate and 30% for milk, containing no vegetable fat other than cocoa butter, containing no artificial additives or flavourings (including 'vanillin') and where the quality, provenance and treatment of the cocoa beans have been considered.
- Filled chocolates or products using other ingredients should follow the spirit of the definition of fine chocolate above.
- Members of the Academy of Chocolate are committed to ethically sourced chocolate.