Can you milk a nut?

No! The name is a portmanteau of ‘nut’ from hazelnut – since this is what we’ve swapped the dairy out for – and ‘milk’ as in ‘milk chocolate’ for the mellow, creamy taste profile.

If Nutmilk has hazelnuts in it, does it taste nutty?

A praline this is not. There’s a very subtle hazelnut backnote, but you wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t looking for it. What you will notice is how creamy and smooth it is, and how deeply chocolatey.

It looks a lot like a dark chocolate to me. Are you sure it tastes like a milk chocolate?

Absolutely. The reason it looks darker than many milk chocolates is that so many of them are made with so much more cheap sugar than pricier cacao – the ingredient that makes chocolate taste chocolatey! Made according to our More Cacao, Less Sugar mantra, Nutmilk is made with 45% cacao. Meanwhile, hazelnut replaces milk to create a creamy texture that replicates the creaminess you’d usually get from dairy, but it doesn’t lighten the colour of the cacao as much as dairy does.

Don’t you already do vegan chocolate?

We already have a wide range of vegan dark chocolate, since most dark chocolate tends to be vegan by nature. Dark chocolate is essentially cacao and a little sugar, so naturally made without dairy, which means that much of our solid dark chocolate and some of our filled recipes just happen to be vegan-friendly.

But choosing to follow a vegan lifestyle or reduce your dairy intake shouldn’t mean you have to give up chocolate with a mellower, creamier taste profile.

Dark chocolate on its own wasn’t enough to offer you – and nor would it have been acceptable to give you the option of the waxy, flavourless milk chocolate substitute that so many chocolate makers offer. That’s why we took our time – five years of development – to create something that’s not a substitute – it’s a delicious chocolate in its own right.

And we won’t stop there. Watch this space – there’s more vegan milk chocolate on the way.

Why did it take five years to develop Nutmilk?

Making a chocolate without dairy that’s as smooth and creamy as traditional milk chocolate is a huge technical challenge (that’s why there are so many bad vegan milk chocolates out there).

Over the years our chocolatiers brought various recipes to our weekly tasting meeting, including options where dairy was replaced with almond and coconut (almost there, and too polarising, respectively).

We got close a few times, but you deserve better than recipes that are just ‘good enough’ – we wanted something that you’d be excited by.

When Nutmilk first appeared in our tasting meeting, it was presented as a new chocolate grade – we tried it, loved it, and then found out there was no milk in it. That’s one of the reasons we’re so confident that it’s unbelievably vegan – and that you’ll be as excited about it as we are.

Psst… What’s your secret?

We could tell you, but we’d have to… ah, you know the rest. Instead, we’ll simply say that Nutmilk is made like nothing else we do: it’s a bespoke process that requires another level of care, attention, precise timings and lots of taste checks (it’s a tough job…). Why do we go to all this trouble? You’ll understand when you taste it.

Is this a dairy-free chocolate suitable for people with dairy allergies?

No, Nutmilk is not a free-from chocolate and is not suitable for people with dairy allergies. There are no added dairy ingredients in Nutmilk, but it’s made in the same factory as our milk chocolates so we can’t guarantee it’s free from milk traces. We do, however, have other fully free-from chocolates that are made in a completely separate environment. Go enjoy!

You said you want to offer vegans milk chocolate options – what else is coming?

We can’t wait to share more with you and we’re hard at work in the Inventing Room on our vegan creations…

In the meantime, get your first taste of Nutmilk.