Willie Harcourt-Cooze... did you know?
By Ronita Dutta
While studying for his A-levels in England, Willie was stabbed on a night out with friends. The terrifying incident left him with a greater sense of his own mortality and a fierce determination to succeed.
According to their mother, Willie’s three children prefer Maltesers to their daddy’s posh chocolate.
Willie’s ultimate comfort food is fresh pan-fried snapper seasoned with salt, a little chilli and finely grated cacao – of course!
The north Devon coast, beach hopping by boat in Venezuela, shooting stars, rum and water with a squeeze of lime and cooking fish on campfires are just a few of Willie’s favourite things.
A consignment of sugar all the way from South America was once delivered to his factory addressed merely to Willie Wonka in Devon.
His wife Tania is an ex-model and descendant of the English romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Willie’s mother was Irish and his Burmese father fled Burma during the Second World War. When Willie was four years old, the family bought a small island off the coast of Ireland where they lived on subsistence farming.
All the machinery in his Devon factory – most of it hailing from the 1920s - has been modified and renovated by handy-man Willie himself.
In their twenties Willie and wife Tania bought a farm in Venezuela called El Tesoro (The Treasure) on a whim and decided to plant 10,000 cacao trees there which flourished in the tropical climate and was the beginning of his chocolate empire.
The Venezuela president, Hugo Chavez, once ordered an investigation into Harcourt-Cooze's export business after a local woman accused him of exploiting local labour and not paying a fair price for cacao beans, but subsequent investigations cleared his name.
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