Raglan Chocolate and Dreamview Creamery are joining forces to bring delectable chocolate milk produced in Whaingaroa to the market.
Locals will get the opportunity to sample the chocolate goodness at the Raglan Creative Market this Sunday, January 26 at the Raglan Chocolate stall.
Raglan Chocolate owners Mike Renfree and Simone Downey had recently started buying the Dreamview milk from Four Square and decided to make a chocolate milk using master chocolatier Mike’s handcrafted chocolate.
“The Dreamview milk is so creamy I decided I must have a go at making chocolate milk. To put something together like this is so exciting and so much fun,” he says.
Jess Hill – the instigator for Dreamview Creamery’s raw and pasteurised milk – says they also had plans to produce other dairy food products including chocolate milk.
“We’ve always wanted to do it but didn’t know how,” she says.
So, when Simone messaged Dreamview on Facebook about the chocolate milk Mike was trialling they jumped at the opportunity.
After his first attempt, which he says wasn’t quite right, Mike has spent the last couple of weeks playing with different blends.
Mike has created two chocolate milk flavours using dark and caramelised chocolates, and combined with the creamy goodness of Dreamview’s milk, the Raglan Chronicle can attest to sampling a flavour bomb of deliciousness.
The two businesses are inviting locals to taste test the chocolate milk at the market and, although the product is only in testing phase, they hope the customer feedback will help them gauge the product’s market viability.
Both businesses put down their success so far to the supportive Whaingaroa community combined with quality products, good ideas and keeping it local.
“I don’t think you could do what we are doing in other towns as well as we have here,” Jess says.
Raglan Chocolate is now sold locally at WOK, Raglan Roast Café and Raglan Roast Te Rapa, La La Land and the Herbal Dispensary, and more recently at Mostly Vegan in Hamilton.
Mike, a food technologist in Hamilton, creates the boutique craft chocolate from a certified production room underneath the house and he is always coming up with new chocolate flavours.
Their cacao beans are organic and ethically sourced direct from grower to maker.
Dreamview started selling their raw milk over a year ago and have since started producing pasteurised milk, which they sell at Raglan Four Square as well as supplying Indi’s, The Shack, Wallis Bistro, Raglan Area Schools Super Kai café, Dizzy Blocks and Holy Crepes.
Jess says although the milk is more expensive, the feedback they have had from café owners is they are saving money in recycling and the reusable glass bottles are the perfect fit for Raglan’s plastic free philosophy.
Taste test the chocolate milk at the Raglan Creative Market this Sunday, January 27 from 10am-2pm at the Old School Arts Centre.
Janine Jackson
