Bittersweet Symphony: Ireland's new generation of ethical chocolate-makers

All over the island, chocolatiers are serving up the highest quality treats for those of us who want to eat proper chocolate with an ethical backbone. Joe McNamee meets the people behind Ireland's chocolate renaissance

Some of Ireland's new chocolatiers: Shobitha Ramadasan; Allison Roberts; Benoit Lorge

While lambs won’t be relishing the prospect of Easter, it is at least the one time of year when egg-laying hens take a breather as the nation’s egg consumption switches almost entirely to the foil-wrapped, and sweet chocolate variety, the time of year when the Irish love affair with the cocoa bean reaches its zenith.

According to Euromonitor, we are the third highest consumer of chocolate in the world, at a staggering 7.4kg per person each year. But it might well be argued that we are consuming an awful lot of chocolate-flavoured confectionery and far less actual chocolate, an argument the only two nations to top our consumption—Germany (7.9kg pp) and Switzerland (9kg pp)—would agree with, taking the opposing side in an EU battle at the turn of the century as to whether ‘chocolate’ produced in Ireland and Britain could even be called ‘chocolate’.