What’s nicer than chocolate 🍫 on Good Friday?

 Well chocolate 🍫 and whisky 🥃 of course!

The drams and pairings:

1. Scapegrace Chorus Release II (46%, £54.37) – paired with Cocoa fruit
2. Compass Box Spice Tree (46%, £45.90) – paired with Columbian 65%
3. Thompson Bros Balmenach 10 (48.5%, £60) – Dram of the Night. SOLD OUT but check them out – paired with 72% Honduras
4. Filey Bay Porter Cask (50%, £78) – BONUS DRAM – paired with 90% Papua New Guinea
5. Cadenhead Fettercairn 15yr Rum cask (53.5%, £70) – paired with 75% Dominican Republic
6. Glencadem TWE 11yrs (61.5%, £67.95) – paired with 65% Guatemalan
7. Torabhaig Allt Gleann Batch Strength (61.1%, £75) – paired with Cameroon milk (45%) & dark (65%) chocolate.

We reunited with Sophie from York Cocoa Works to put on ‘Cocoa & Drams II’ as part of the 2024 York Chocolate Festival, a sequel to our 2022 tasting.

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We started with Scapegrace Chorus Release II from New Zealand (46%, £54.37) with a green grape taste that gave this young whisky an accomplished feel. With this we tried Cocoa fruit – a liquid 20x sweeter than sugar launching us into a journey of chocolate making.

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Then we tried chocolate in its purest form – straight from production, no stabilising fat for storage and this 65% from Colombian Tumaco beans was voted chocolate of the night. We paired it with Compass Box Spice Tree (46%, £45.90) which was well received.

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Dram of the night followed – a Thompson Bros Balmenach 10yr old (48.5%, £60). A refined sherry experience voted for by over half the room. Paired with a 72% Honduras chocolate which was likened to a Bordeaux wine – fruity and accomplished.

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We love to give EXTRA at York Whisky Club and so a HUGE THANKS to the Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery who allowed us to slot in a bonus dram – the released-that-day Filey Bay Porter cask (50%, £78). This is a limited edition which has a sweet start that leads into a Porter finish. Bonus whisky equals bonus chocolate, so attendees got to try a smokey 90% Papua New Guinea, the country’s high rainfall contributing to a cocoa crop that creates chocolate with a low bitterness at higher percentages of cocoa.

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Next up was a Cadenhead Fettercairn 15yr Rum cask (53.5%, £70) which we found slightly disappointing especially as we liked their Enigma 25yr old blend last month. Dram of the night at that tasting was the Mossburn/Foursquare collaboration which several attendees thought would have made a great substitute for this one. Pair was a 75% Dominican Republic citrus-note chocolate whose beans maintain a high price due to being 100% organic.

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The penultimate dram was a Glencadem bottling from The Whisky Exchange (11yrs, 61.5%, £67.95) which got us onto the stronger stuff with a tropical, fruity ‘lighter’ taste arising from the upwards lyne arms on their stills. This slipped down nicely with sherbet’y & tangy 65% Guatemalan chocolate.

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Our final dram was Torabhaig Allt Gleann Batch Strength (61.1%, £75) from Skye. The end of this series, the 22.8ppm residual phenols gave a lovely peaty finale with a double header from Cameroon of ‘smoked, toasted, tobacco’ milk (45%) & dark (65%) chocolate.

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Ryan won our Compass Box pack & Dee got the handcrafted chocolate egg in our Easter raffle. Each ticket included chocolate and we offered bonus bottle-kill drams so everyone went home happy!

HUGE THANKS to Sophie from York Cocoa Works for helping us become connoisseurs in chocolate as well as whisky!