What’s an Ocelot?

Have you ever wondered why our chocolate company is called 'Ocelot'?

An ocelot is a small wild cat, native to the Americas (it's pronounced oss-eh-lot). They often live on cocoa plantations, and their beautiful and distinctive leopard-like coat has been admired and worshipped in these regions for millennia.

And the reasons we named our chocolate company after this cat? Well it started with Ish (a long time lover of leopard print) seeing a 1920’s ocelot fur cape in an antique store. She didn’t buy it of course, but it got us thinking about this beautiful little animal we’d never heard of, and the more we learned, the more it seemed to strangely fit with the chocolate company we were in the process of creating… 

As we talked about ocelots and chocolates we realised the linguistic similarities in the words make them sound nice together (the only letter they don’t share is the ‘H’), and with more research we discovered that, like tomato, potato, chipotle, and chocolate, ocelot is a word with its origins in the Nahuatl language, spoken in Mexico since the Aztecs.

In the mid-20th century ocelots became fashionable as a pet. Famously the surrealist artist Salvador Dali travelled everywhere with his ocelot, Babou, even taking it on transatlantic cruises. Dali was also known for blurring the boundaries between art and food with his decadent feasts; showcased in his book Les Diners de Gala.

Sadly, as we saw in that antique store, ocelots were persecuted for their fur right up until last century. This, combined with habitat destruction, means they are now an endangered species, with as few as 100 now living wild in the U.S, and declining numbers in the rest of the Americas.

Making chocolate that came from sources that were working to protect the environment, people and animals was always a priority for us. So it was in this spirit of heritage, conservation, beauty and artistic expression that the name Ocelot Chocolate was born, and goes on today!