Martin Christy - Editor and Reviewer

A Founder Member of the Academy of Chocolate in the UK, Martin has been a passionate follower of fine chocolate ever since a chance encounter with Valrhona’s Guanaja in 1993 in Harrods, London. Having grown up in the Midlands close to some of the UK’s major industrial chocolate manufacturers, an interest in finer, healthier food and a growing obsession with the origin and variety of fine chocolate converted him from a previous lifelong devotion to traditional British 'candy' products.

Martin started development of Seventypercent.com in 1999 to raise awareness of the quality and origin of the chocolate we eat, and to help with the rediscovery of chocolate as a complex, ancient, beneficial and spiritual food. As well as being a chocolate obsessive, Martin is also a web development and usability consultant, and an occasional creator of jazz-influenced eclectic beats music.

Graham Coulson - Site Designer

Graham is the site designer/developer. He has worked closely with Martin Christy for several years and over that time has been converted into something of a fine chocolate lover.

Graham is interested in all areas of food and cooking and is a keen wine drinker/taster. He is happy to support the argument that fine chocolate and fine wine are not mutually exclusive and that they can in fact work wonderfully well together when matched creatively and intelligently.

As well as playing and recording music Graham teaches guitar to several budding rock stars in his small home village.

Joanna Crosby - Reviewer

Joanna has been interested in food history ever since investigating the use and display of kitchens in English Country Houses for her MA in Heritage Management. Discovering which dishes were fashionable at different periods in history, and why, has developed into an interest in the natural history of various ingredients, especially cocoa.

Joanna has developed her research for various talks and demonstrations, including a very successful lecture for the Cambridge Food Festival in 2004, at which audience members sampled her ‘Aztec Blood Drink’ – a taste of the earliest chocolate recipe. Joanna is Education Section Administrator at Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

If you would like to contact Joanna about any aspect of food history, or to discuss booking her for a talk or written piece, please email her at joanna@newsense-recordings.co.uk.

Hans-Peter Rot - Reviewer, Forum moderator

Hans-Peter Rot is a contributing writer for the specialty food e-zine, The Nibble, and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in nutritional anthropology.

Peter's passion for chocolate stemmed from his interest in all things food, and after a first bite of Valrhona's Le Noir Amer 71%, mere curiosity was transformed into a full-fledged obsession.

His home is Virginia, but because of his studies he presently resides in New Mexico, where Peter is taking advantage of the availability of foods from the interesting local culinary scene.

Peter happened to find Seventypercent.com on an online chocolate search one day, and joined the forum when it was just a small entity with only a few active members, and is happy to have seen it (and the site) grow throughout the years.

Alex Rast - Reviewer

Alex Rast grew up a chocolate obsessive from birth and had the good fortune to be in a family whose father was an expert (amateur) chef and restaurant finder whose talent bordered on a sixth sense. As a result he was exposed to quality food (and good chocolate) from a very young age and had concepts of what good chocolate is ingrained into his tastes during childhood. When he moved to Seattle, WA to attend university, he quickly set out with similar obsession to learn everything about chocolate, its properties, uses, and sources that a single individual can know.

A physicist by training and an advanced electronics designer by profession, he has researched baking with chocolate and chocolate recipes, chocolate manufacture, and the theory of chocolate taste, perception, and blending with similar scientific approach. Nonetheless he never forgets that chocolate is above all else a subjective experience, and that the essence of chocolate lies not in elaborate, abstruse technical concepts or dry theories but in the very real pleasure of eating a good chocolate bar or confection - an experience that must always be very personal and individual.

Anne Bramley - Reviewer

Anne Bramley is the creator and host of Eat Feed (www.eatfeed.com), a podcast devoted to every aspect of food from contemporary to historical and culinary to political. In preparing a show on chocolate for Valentine’s Day, she discovered Seventy Percent, invited Martin to be a guest, and later decided to combine her love of tasting with her love of writing by becoming a reviewer.

As a teenager, she ran a small baking business out of her mother’s house, delivering chocolate desserts to the local area. But at university she turned to more intellectual aspects of food. Awarded the Jane Grigson Trust bursary and other grants for archival research, she is currently finishing her Ph.D. dissertation on food in Renaissance England at the University of Chicago. New projects take her into the 17th century, when chocolate first came to England, to look at chocolate cookery and chocolate houses.