Chocolate and whiskey producers create tasty collaborations

The family enterprise, owned and run by husband and wife team Shane and Dorothy Neary, has become a first call for leading distilleries such as Old Bushmills in County Antrim, County Down’s Hinch, near Ballynahinch, and Killowen in Rostrevor, and independent whiskey blender Two Stacks, Newry.

The artisan chocolate maker, which also counts iconic London store Fortnum and Mason among its high-profile customers, has created gourmet chocolates for the whiskey producers, including handcrafted truffles and a luxury bar from the finest ingredients.

The company produced an ‘Old Fashioned’ bar for Bushmills of 70 per cent chocolate that was crafted from beans sourced from a single estate in Ecuador. The project for Bushmills was a revival of a traditional chocolate bar with other premium ingredients such as Orange Bitters, a blend of tropical oranges and spices, brown sugar and rich cacao beans from Ecuador’s Limon region.

Chocolate truffles for the other projects also featured unique recipes using the beans from Ecuador. Irish double cream liqueur from Two Stacks was used in truffles.

Shane, a director of Two Stacks, says: “We were thrilled with the truffles produced from our unique Double Irish Cream, a really memorable taste and ideal addition to our developing range of original products, especially our Double Irish Cream.”

The innovation-led chocolate maker, in addition, has collaborated with Whitewater Brewery in Castlewellan, County Down, on chocolates featuring its award-winning Belfast Black Stout.

Whitewater’s founding managing director Bernard Sloan sees the link with the chocolate makers as “a natural process of developing business relationships within the local community”. The brewery, Northern Ireland’s most successful, has also collaborated with Hinch Distillery in Ballynahinch on beer flavoured whiskeys and on a whiskey stout. Bernard has also launched a pizza operation with mozzarella from Velocheese in Belfast.

NearyNógs operates from a fully-equipped workshop in the Mournes that also features a visitor centre. In addition to this, the chocolate maker has a strong relationship with the nearby Killowen Distillery.

Brendan Carty, managing director and master distiller at Killowen Distillery, says: “We are delighted to be collaborating with our friends at NearyNogs for the benefit of both our small businesses. We are, after all, close neighbours in the Mournes and it makes business and community sense to do everything possible to assist the local economy. Our chocolate and whiskey events are proving immensely popular with tourists as well as local people.

“We also share a dedication to the preservation of the precious environment in which we operate,” he adds.

NearyNógs uses solar panels to power its production operation and has also introduced eco-packaging and other environmental preservation measures.

The small business has since won a series of awards for quality, taste and innovation, including the prestigious Mott Green Award from the influential Academy of Chocolate in London for its commitment to sustainability, eco packaging and support for cacao farmers and their communities.

NearyNógs worked with the Grenada Chocolate company in the development of the unique Sailboat Chocolate for Fortnum and Mason, chocolate produced, shipped and manufactured without use of fossil fuels.

NearyNógs was also among the first artisans to develop a gluten-free stone ground chocolate bar to add to its collection of soft chocolate products.

The new bean-to-bar chocolate has been created to offer “something quite different from other handmade chocolate currently on the market”, according to Shane. Its introduction extended NearyNógs’ range of chocolate flavours, including lemon and green tea, toasted walnut, mojito macha, almond nut buttercup, local seaweed and cardamom and clove.

The County Down-based company has also developed a chocolate filled with Armagh Bramley apple.

“We believe that we have very different products that would appeal to chocolate lovers everywhere. We’ve also taken steps to increase volumes while still maintaining their essential artisan handcrafted nature and the ethos of the business.”