Notes on chocolate: Ukraine’s hero chocolatiers | Ukraine | The Guardian

Making delicious chocolate is one thing, doing it in a war zone is worthy of a medal

A few weeks ago Felicity Spector, senior producer of Channel 4 News, contacted me. She’d just returned from another trip to Ukraine, could she send me some amazing chocolate she’d found there? This made me quite emotional for many reasons.

My answer was: of course. And a few days later a package arrived with some bean-to-bar Meetty chocolate that had come, via the C4 news desk in London, to me in Suffolk from Ukraine. What I was sent was the gift box, £25 plus shipping, that has won an Academy of Chocolate silver award. In this beautifully simple box there are 12 mini-bars of chocolate, each colourfully illustrated with examples of Ukrainian art and each weighing 24g, which is a perfect one-person portion and don’t let anyone tell you different.

The flavours were all wonderful and a mixture of the traditional: dark, milk, almond and orange, and fresh mixes, such as coffee and cinnamon, rose and grape, and cheese. I contacted co-founder Oleksiy, in awe of someone (he’s not alone, remember I wrote about Stranger chocolate a year ago) producing chocolate in a war zone. How was he doing? ‘Well, we keep going and running our family business despite the challenges: missiles, drones, blackouts, war logistics, lack of personnel, rising bean prices and taxes. But, in many ways, we feel incredibly lucky to still have the opportunity to work, to produce chocolate that brings some relief to our friends (all our customers are friends and partners), to provide employment to others, and to welcome guests to our workshop. We were especially happy that Felicity was able to visit us.’

Do please support them if you possibly can. The chocolate is delicious: 65g bars of individual flavours are £4 plus shipping and you can order by sending a message to instagram.com/meetty_chocolate.

Follow Annalisa on X @AnnalisaB