After decades working with wine and spirits, Josh Stacey stumbled across a different kind of flavour obsession. Now, in his 50s, he’s building a chocolate business that supports small farmers, champions Australian ingredients and proves a new chapter can begin at any age.
Josh Stacey can still remember the first time he tasted what he calls “real chocolate”.
He was working in the distilling industry at the time and had brought the head chef and sommelier from a Sydney restaurant group to visit the distillery in Canberra. With some time to fill, the trio wandered next door to Jasper & Myrtle, a bean-to-bar chocolate maker.
The smell of roasting cacao beans hit him first. Then came the chocolate.
“It changed my life,” Stacey says.
“I still remember the light-bulb moment of tasting their chocolate and thinking, ‘What have I been eating all my life?’”
After decades spent around wine, hospitality and distilling, Stacey knew flavour. And this was nothing like the supermarket chocolate he’d grown up eating.
“I could immediately taste how much more distinctive and intense the flavours were compared with supermarket chocolate.”
About a year later, Stacey registered the Wembley’s business name.
Stacey had been involved in flavour creation and appreciation virtually since leaving the Army at 22, spending the past two decades largely on the sales and business side of wine and distilling.
But after years spent on the sales and business side, he increasingly wanted to make something himself.
The chocolate encounter planted the seed, but another nudge came when he read Brand Mysticism by Steven Grasse, the entrepreneur behind brands including Hendrick’s Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum.
Stacey realised he wanted to build a brand of his own. Wine and spirits no longer felt like the answer because he barely drank, and he wanted his next venture to have a positive impact.
That was enough to get him started. Starting a business in his 50s has brought the inevitable moments of doubt, but Stacey doesn’t consider Wembley’s a reinvention.
“I put my salesman hat on, sold the idea to my wife, bought some beans from Jasper & Myrtle, some basic equipment, and started experimenting at home,” he says.
“It’s definitely the next chapter of where my experience and life have taken me. There have certainly been plenty of moments when I’ve questioned the timing and thought, ‘What on earth am I doing starting this now?’
“But I also realise that without all those years of experience, I probably wouldn’t have been in a position to start Wembley’s in the first place.”
Today, Wembley’s operates from Brookvale on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, making chocolate from raw cacao bean through to finished bar.
And Stacey talks about cacao much like a winemaker talks about grapes.
The variety matters. So do the soil, climate, growing conditions, fermentation and drying, before the chocolate maker adds another layer through roasting.
“Cacao from different places can taste completely different even when we make the chocolate using essentially the same recipe,” he says.
“One origin might give you red fruit or acidity, another might be more earthy, nutty, floral or tropical.”
Watching customers discover that is still one of his favourite parts of the job.
“You wouldn’t expect Shiraz from two completely different regions to taste identical, and cacao is much the same.”
Wembley’s keeps its chocolate deliberately simple. There are no emulsifiers or vanilla used to create a uniform flavour.
“We pay a lot to get the best cacao beans we can find, so why would we then try to hide those flavours?” Stacey says.
“Our goal is to make the cacao the star.”
He jokes that it’s a terrible business model because his chocolate is designed to be savoured rather than scoffed.
“A couple of pieces can be enough when there’s that much flavour and intensity.”
Wembley’s main cacao supply comes from Vanuatu, particularly about 20 smallholder farming families on the western side of Malekula Island.
Stacey lived in Papua New Guinea as a child and understands how differently a dollar can travel in Pacific communities.
“Farmers will take their beans to market, sell them for cash and often return home with things like building materials,” he says.
“Bean-to-bar chocolate bought in Australia can literally help build houses in the Pacific.”
Wembley’s generally pays several times the commodity price, rewarding farmers for the work required to properly ferment and dry high-quality cacao.
Closer to home, Stacey buys beans from Derek at Cassowary Valley in Far North Queensland, where around 1000 cacao trees are growing.
They are Wembley’s most expensive beans, but Stacey believes supporting Australian growers is worth it.
“With traditional farming industries in that region, like sugar cane, under pressure, I’d love to see cacao become a viable alternative crop and help keep farming families on the land.”
Australian flavours don’t end with the cacao.
Wattleseed, saltbush, strawberry gum, native mint and desert lime have all found their way into Wembley’s creations.
“Wattleseed is a great example because it naturally has chocolate, coffee and roasted nut flavours, so it works beautifully with cacao,” Stacey says.
His sentimental favourite is the Desert Lime dark milk chocolate, the first native Australian chocolate Wembley’s made and one it still produces today.
The Australian-grown cacao itself can throw up some remarkable surprises.
Depending on the harvest, Stacey says he’s found flavours reminiscent of cherry, coconut and even Turkish delight.
Those flavours aren’t added. They come naturally from the cacao.
For Stacey, his age has proved to be an advantage rather than an obstacle.
Starting something new in your 50s, he acknowledges, can be harder. There are responsibilities and a greater awareness of everything that might go wrong.
“I might have had more energy and less fear, but I didn’t have the experience, palate, commercial knowledge or patience I have now.”
A few years ago, Wembley’s was an idea, some cacao beans and basic equipment at home. Today there’s a chocolate factory and a growing business, although Stacey says he’s still learning every day.
His message to anyone sitting on an idea in their 50s or 60s is beautifully simple.
“I wouldn’t dismiss it just because of their age,” he says.
“The years behind them might actually be what makes the idea possible.”
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