Anders Ørbæk and Stuart Eve met in 2014 when picking up their sons from nature kindergarten in Aarhus, Denmark. Stu and his wife Anna, are British archaeologists and had moved to Denmark for Anna to take up a job at Aarhus University. Anders is a jazz musician who lives in Aarhus with his partner, singer-songwriter Mia Schøler. As our children became friends, so did we all, and in July 2016, we went camping together on the magical Danish island of Samsø. We were inspired by the unbelievable sweetness of Samsø's strawberries, and, wrapped in blankets under the stars, we drank rum, ate chocolate and dreamed big of new adventures. Stu had been playing around with making chocolate for a few months, but that July evening, we decided that we wanted to do more and make delicious organic chocolate that highlighted Denmark's amazing seasonal ingredients.

Over the following weeks and months, we experimented some more, and by the middle of autumn 2016, we founded Ørbæk & Eve. After a successful Danish crowdfunding campaign; the production and distribution of over 1000 bars; and two coveted Academy of Chocolate awards, Stu and Anna had to return to the UK to take up new jobs in UK universities.

We miss making chocolate with our dear friends Anders and Mia, but we [Anna and Stu] are now settled in the picture perfect village of Burley in the New Forest. Inspired once more by the subtlety of the landscapes, flavours of the local produce, strength of the community and the changing of the seasons, we are once again ready to create incredible chocolate.

We hand make our chocolate in small batches, from bean to bar. This means we roast, crack and winnow the cocoa beans ourselves, before conching them (grinding the beans so that they become liquid) with organic sugar usually for at least 24 hours.

The three plain bars that are the foundations of our range are our dark chocolate, Nordic Noir 65%, our award-winning dark milk ‘northern lights’ Nordlys (40%) and our white chocolate, Heimdal. Find out more about the flavour profiles of our three delicious signature bars here.

Beyond dark, light, and white, we will also be trying out new, seasonal flavour combinations and ingredients as limited edition bars. Watch this space.

organic // fairtrade // handmade // local // seasonal