Stories

Wildness Organic Chocolate
 
I love all things food, but as I have a special fondness for dark chocolate, it seemed only fitting that our first story should be on this subject!
 
I first met Marie Monmont from Wildness Organic Chocolate over 5 years ago when we had a Brazilian chef named Freddie in our kitchen.  Marie came in with some dried fruit for Freddie to try, hoping he would recognise what it was.  For once Freddie’s excellent nose and taste buds let him down. Maybe because he had gotten too used to NZ fruits and was trying to figure out which NZ tree had produced such a gorgeous dried fruit!  The fruit was Cupuaçu, (pronunciation ku-poo-ah-soo) grown in abundance in his homeland of Brazil and used widely for it’s health benefits and creamy dense texture.  

Marie, who is a talented chef and passionate entrepreneur, was in the process of importing cupuaçu as a dried product to make her own chocolate in Wellington.  Fast forward to 2020 and you will find Marie’s beautiful chocolates in some of our best hotels and selected retail outlets here and internationally.  ‘A guide to artisan chocolatiers’ by author Steve Huyton explores fine chocolates of the world.  In this book he featured 32 chocolatiers in the world for their work and ‘Wildness chocolate’ was one of these. 

My favourite part of Marie’s journey with chocolate is that she chose to set up her company as a social enterprise, giving back to her community in a way that is truly inspirational. Wildness chocolate is produced and packaged by hand in the Rimutaka prison with a group of inmates Marie has worked with over the years to empower with new skills to aid their return to society.  Marie also has a facility in Singapore which processes organically grown cacao beans, once again empowering the less advantaged in society with skills, and employing those with special needs.  

Marie also harvests a range of raw forest honey, again in partnership with the Rimutaka prison inmates, which we have have in store too.

If you would like to know more about Marie and her story, Rachel Knight from Good Stuff has written a wonderful article that you can read here.

Whenever we feature a food product we will be featuring tasters in the store that week so don’t forget to pop in, say ‘Hi’ and try Wildness for yourself. I will be :).