The Islay drams we sipped, and the Chocolate we munched…
When we did Cocoa & Drams in our first year, pairing chocolate with whisky, it was one of our quickest selling events. One of the things we like to do as a club is bring more people into the world of whisky and we were delighted that we had couples where one was a whisky fan and the other was a chocolate fan, and it brought people together. Cocoa and Drams II last year was a similar tasting – we brought people together, tried some amazing chocolate and some fantastic drams.
As regular attendees know, we like to push the boundaries of our tastings, and after two chocolate love-ins, we thought – can we push the boundaries a bit? What about SUPER smoky, peaty drams with high-end chocolate?
Islay and the Chocolate factory was conceived and become a reality in October.
The drams and pairings
- Caol Ila 15 Year Old Unpeated Special Releases (59.1% £150) paired with Valrhona Dulcey, Blond chocolate bar (35% Cocoa, £6.45/70g)
- Kilchoman PX sherry 2021 (distillery bottling) 47.3% / £70 paired with Chocolarder, Wild Gorse Flower, Milk Chocolate Bar (50% Cocoa, £6.95 / 70g) *** Dram + Pairing of the Night ***
- Lagavulin 12 Tequila 2023 Release (56.4% / £146) paired with Bonnat, Cacao Real del Xoconuzco, dark chocolate bar (75% Cocoa, £11.95/70g) *** Chocolate of the night ***
- Woodrow’s Bunnahabhain (Moine) (58% £81.95) paired with Cluizel, La Laguna, dark chocolate bar (70% Cocoa, £6.95/70g)
- Laphroaig Cairdeas 2020 Port and Wine (58% / £97) paired with Zotter, Labooko Haiti, dark chocolate bar (72% Cocoa, £5.45/70g)
- Thomson Bros Ardbeg 2008 16yrs (57.1% / £162.95) paired with Pralus – Venezuela, dark chocolate bar (75% Cocoa, £8.95/100g)
Thanks to the generosity of attendees, we raised £139 for St Leonard’s Hospice and our JustGiving page is now up to £4,010 – our target is to raise £5,000 12 months which we hope to smash at Dream Drams.
Thanks to his SUPER generosity, Tim’s large donation secured him maximum raffle tickets and he went home with the Bruichladdich glass set and a bottle of The Classic Laddie (RRP £46). A big THANKS 🙏🏻 to Bruichladdich for donating both.
After an intro that made much of peaty whisky, we messed attendees around with an unpeated Caol Ila, a 2018 Special Release from Diageo. A peppery note, this was a welcome intro – some missed the Caol Ila smokiness, whilst others really appreciated this 15yr old release.
Its pairing was a blond chocolate. This type of chocolate was discovered by accident about twenty years ago by Valrhona’s head pastry chef, Frédéric Bau. He’d left some white chocolate warming in a bain-marie and forgotten about it. When he came back hours later, it had turned a beautiful golden colour and was giving off aromas of biscuits and caramel.
Instead of burning, the milk solids had caramelised — a gentle version of the same Maillard reaction that gives bread its crust or coffee its roast. After years of refining the process, Valrhona released it as Dulcey — the so-called ‘fourth colour of chocolate’.
It’s smooth and creamy like white chocolate, but with richer notes of shortbread, butterscotch, and a little salt to stop it being overly sweet. basically like a posh Caramac bar.
After such a smooth entry, it was time to live up to the bold tasting adventure and this Kilchoman PX sherry distillery-pour stamped its foot on Dram of the Night with its farm-to-bottle distinctive islay taste. In their words:
“Kilchoman PX Sherry Cask Matured was the distillery’s first major worldwide limited batch sherried bottling.”
The 33 casks for this first batch Kilchoman PX Sherry Cask Matured were selected by Anthony Wills from Kilchoman’s sherried stock. Nine of these were full maturation Pedro Ximenez sherry casks, while the remaining 24 casks were re-racked into Pedro Ximenez casks for 12-18 months before the final vatting, and bottled at 47.3% – yielding a total of 12,000 bottles for worldwide release.”
Obviously 12,000 bottles is very limited and exclusive (!) and we were glad attendees enjoyed it. The chocolate pairing was from a small Cornish maker called ‘Chocolarder’ in Falmouth, who do everything from bean to bar. No additives, no flavourings, just good cocoa and in this one, they’ve used wild gorse flowers, which they steep into the cocoa butter. Attendees described this as ‘posh Bounty chocolate’ and this grabbed Pairing of the Night.
In the tasting intro, we declared that their presence meant that attendees were CLEARLY bold taste adventurers and we definitely had that in store with our next pairing.
A couple of years ago, someone in Mexican Tequila cask sales was clearly promised a cash bonus and various distilleries started finishing whisky in tequila casks. We poured the 22nd release of Lagavulin 12 Year with its finish in ex-Don Julio Anejo Tequila casks, imparting aromas of peat smoke, mango, bright citrus and smoked bouquet garni on the nose.
More popular than other tequila cask whiskies we have tried (no names!), we also headed to southern Mexico for the chocolate, to the Soconusco region of Chiapas – widely regarded as one of the birthplaces of cacao cultivation.
The chocolate came from Bonnat, a family-run maker from Voiron, France, founded back in 1884. They were among the first to produce single-origin bars, and their approach is all about texture and precision – low-acidity roasting, long conching, and a signature buttery smoothness.
The cacao itself, known as Cacao Real del Xoconuzco, was once considered “royal cacao,” offered as tribute to Aztec rulers and among the first beans ever exported to Europe. Bonnat helped bring this variety back to life after centuries of neglect.
Despite being 75 percent, the bar is anything but harsh – it’s refined and beautifully balanced. Attendees found floral and citrus notes – violet, mandarin, elderflower – followed by honey, cream, and a gentle caramel finish.
Our most expensive chocolate at £11.95 for 70g, this told us something we already knew – our attendees have good/expensive taste – and this took our Chocolate of the Night in the post-tasting voting.
We’ve had great whisky from Woodrow’s of Edinburgh, and having said that Bunnahabhain is mostly famous for its unpeated whisky, we poured one of their releases of the peaty variety. Bunnahabhain uses “Mòine” to denote peated whisky to reference the distillery’s 19th-century origins when its malts were strongly peated, and to signify the smoky, peaty character of this specific line. “Mòine” means “peat” in Scots Gaelic, directly indicating the presence of this smoky flavor profile.
The chocolate bar came from Michel Cluizel, one of France’s most meticulous chocolate houses, sourced from small farms in Guatemala’s Alta Verapaz region, a mix of Trinitario and Criollo varieties. It’s fermented in wooden boxes, sun-dried, and roasted gently to preserve its natural balance. The result is a chocolate that feels carefully built rather than engineered – layers of roasted cocoa, molasses, plum and baked apple, lifted by licorice spice and a clean, lingering finish. Smooth, composed, and quietly confident.
Decent love for the whisky, no votes for the chocolate, but intriguing – as paired tastings often are – a couple of votes for the pairing.
“Cairdeas” is a Scottish Gaelic word for “friendship” and Laphroiag use it as a title for the series of limited edition whiskies that, at the time of their release, were only available at the distillery and to members of the Friends of Laphroaig group. Each Cairdeas release is different from the one that preceded it, often highlighting different ages and cask types. While some of the more recent bottles may not explicitly state as much on their labels, the Cairdeas releases are considered to be part of the wider pool of releases for the annual Feis Ile festival on Islay.
The 2020 Port & Wine edition had multi-cask aging process. While some of the single malt is matured in ex-Bourbon casks, another batch is aged in second-fill Ruby Port barriques. Finally, the two are combined in red wine casks to complete their journey as a wine finished whisky. This combines the famously rugged flavours of peat smoke and iodine with hints of dark chocolate, honey and pink peppercorn.
Unfortunately, at this stage of the tasting adventure, attendee palates had taken a smoky hammering and this dram wasn’t quite as appreciated as your York Whisky Club hosts know it should be.
The chocolate for this pairing was Zotter’s Labooko Haiti 72%, made by Josef Zotter in Austria – a maker known for combining precision with creativity. Zotter were one of the first in Europe to take full control of the process, making everything in-house from raw cacao rather than industrial couverture.
Our final whisky was a single malt from Ardbeg distillery, distilled on 29th October 2008 and aged for 16 years in a refill butt (#5089) before being bottled by independent bottler, Thompson Brothers to celebrate the Thompson family’s 25th anniversary at the Dornoch Castle. One of only 200 bottles, it has a subtle Ardbeg note and since we’ve tried this after the tasting, our reflection is that a younger, stronger Ardbeg might have slotted better into the phenol shootout that was ‘Islay and the Chocolate Factory’.
Our final chocolate was from Venezuela, made from Trinitario cacao, prized for its natural balance of sweetness and floral aroma. Pralus roast gently to bring out its deeper tones – a toasted butter and liquorice aroma, followed by smoky, earthy cocoa, dried fruit, and a faint acidity.