The annual list of visitors feeds an already large mail order database “We specialise in satisfying individual requests. Ten years ago, when she and her husband Alan were working at Central Television in Birmingham, they felt a longing to find a country retreat. Elizabeth, who had taken a six-month course in chocolate-making in Belgium, was sure they could make a go of setting up a business, even if the site of their prospective new home was remote Initially she would simply make chocolates. But then they realised that the very activity arouses interest and excitement (think of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and the idea of a chocolate farm was born.Farm buildings were converted into factory premises and a tea room was built. At the height of the tourist season they have a team of 10 servicing the farm, mostly Welsh-speaking locals. There are over 190 different handmade lines: truffles, fondant chocolates with citrus and strawberry flavours, milk chocolate bars, sugar-free chocolates, organic chocolates, as well as shameless tourist bric-a-brac such as moulded Welsh pointy hats.Elizabeth Jones’s decision to create a chocolate farm came about purely by chance. To make it, bitter chocolate is combined with hot dried chillies, toasted nuts, fresh vanilla, garlic and a blend of many other spices.
It is an essential ingredient for Mexican moles (chicken and turkey stews).Another company, Choccywoccydoodah from Brighton, will be displaying fanciful chocolate cakes big enough to serve several hundred (“baroque Cherubic fantasies and decadent Gothic gargoyles”), and Patty Wood & Co are exhibiting their chocolate worms, maggots, spiders and Monty Python range which includes Lumberjack Fudge and Dead Parrots.Even more off-the-wall has to be the stall of Youngs, the Wandsworth, South London, brewers, with their double chocolate stout, a combination of chocolate malt, real dark chocolate and a full-flavoured dark beer.In this context the Welsh Chocolate Farm sounds positively normal, and indeed offers one of the widest selections of chocolates in the country. If you can’t get to Wales to experience the phenomenon, there is a chance to see it in London next month when the farm will be represented at the second International Festival of Chocolate, held at the Royal Horticultural Hall in Victoria.
The main chocolate companies – Thorntons, Lindt, Neuhaus and Green & Black, the pioneers of organic chocolate, will of course be among the 40-odd exhibitors. But there are plently of less predictable stalls, including that of Picnic Fayre from Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk (of all places), who sell a searingly-hot chilli and chocolate spice paste devised by chef Steven Wheeler. IN RURAL Carmarthen, an hour and a half out of Swansea, is the country’s only chocolate farm The Welsh Chocolate Farm, as it styles itself. This summer no fewer than 90,000 people made a pilgrimage to this unlikely temple, an otherwise ordinary farm of some 140 acres.
It boasts neither cacao plantations nor any living farm animals at all, but its owner, chocolatier Elizabeth Jones, can parade a feast of edible chocolate animals, pigs, lambs, horses, rabbits, cats, dogs and elephants in front of her visitors. Mark-up: where did it go?Savigny-Les-Beaunes 1995, Vincent Girardin, pounds 22.50Too young, like almost all restaurant Burgundy; but the appellation turns out top-value middleweight wines, and the producer is of sound qualityChablis, Domaine Ste Anne 1997, JM Brocard, pounds 16.95At basic DOC level, Brocard makes a lot of good Chablis; this specimen is well-priced by comparison with many. If you want merely to choose, however, there’s an un-annotated “index” The wines are not only good but very reasonably priced. As for the prose style, here’s a sample: “This really is a wine to chew on and enjoy as the full thrust of 13.5 per cent alcohol-driven beauty fires down your throat.”Joseph Perrier Cuvee Royale 1990, pounds 27.50If this is the same cuvee of JP 1990 that I’ve tasted, it’s the Champagne bargain of your dreams Quality: exceptional. But then Dr Johnson would not have sauntered in with Tobias Smollett and asked for a grapefruit and soda while he dithered between the strudel of Provencale vegetables and the onion and feta frittata.Nor, indeed, would Richard the Lionheart, who doesn’t know what he’s missing.WHAT’S ON THE WINE LISTRichard Ehrlich’s selectionI’ve never seen such a loquacious list Its 88 wines take up 19 pages.
Candlelight renders an atmospheric transformation, and the food is more ambitious, as pithiviers and polenta poke their noses in. But it is too tempting not to stick with the locally-sourced flesh-feasts such as the roast rack of Hampshire Down lamb or the duck with kumquats. Steaks are thick as a farmer’s thigh, and pudding is the stuff of Just William’s dreams.If you had to look for negatives you’d say the fruit juice isn’t up to much and the vegetarian options don’t come close to the carnivorous fare. The “Wyk” rarebit, made with beer, is crunchy and tangy and, I would guess, unavailable in London at a restaurant of this calibre (well, maybe Foxtrot Oscar).If lunch is an 18th-century novel, then dinner is Romantic poetry. Here there is no space on the wall, but the spirit of heartiness is the same.Soups are perfect – roast tomato and pepper, for example, is properly thick and sweet, not nearly as poncey as it sounds. Through them bustle hundreds of staff – old plates don’t hang around, appetite does not wait too long on hunger, and drinks get served as soon as thirst rises.At lunch you must eat pies.
