Visiting the Salon du Chocolat 2009

As you may have noticed, this year I’ve been eagerly looking forward to my 2^nd visit to the Salon du Chocolat, and it surely was a long day full of inspiring encounters. And though this celebration of chocolate is primarily a consumer fair, I went much less for touristy reasons than last year…

Before entering the expo, I was impatiently looking forward a meetup with Clay Gordon. Clay is the author of Discover Chocolate, runs the community The Chocolate Life, and is a standing evangelist of fine chocolate. The rather funny thing is that both Clay and I got hooked on luxurious origin chocolate bars about the same time in the early 90’s, by the same brand, being the French chocolate maker Stéphane Bonnat.
We had a long lovely talk about our shared passion, I was certainly impressed with Clay’s dedication to the food of the gods, and to him, chocolate ultimately is “his lens to look at and understand everything in the world”.
Our initial ‘couple of minutes’ was round up only an hour and a half later, and I ended up with me taking my first video interview ever – armed with my Press badge . So soon on Choqoa.com, a passionate video talk with Clay, one to watch!

Pralus

Over at Pralus, it was a warm encounter again with Valerie the export manager, who really encouraged me last year to ‘do something’.  This year I also talked with Francois Pralus himself about his passion and vision, and it was wonderful to hear him explaining his angle on the quest for particular cacao beans and developing its characteristics. Also with him, I have a nice video interview to post soon.

Bonnat

In these competitive times it was heartwarming to learn that Bonnat and Pralus really get along with each other. Both boots were only a few steps from each other. I felt really charmed by the fact that Bonnat’s sales agent remembered me from last year, being “that guy that bought almost all of our bars”.  Stéphane turned out to be a very accompanying man, who proudly boasts a 125 years old family tradition. Watch the coming video interview here too, and enjoy Bonnat sharing chocolate memories from his childhood.

AMMA

One of the last persons I met was no less than Frederick Schilling, former founder of US based Dagoba Chocolates, a famous organic cacao company which he recently sold. With the new AMMA Chocolates brand, Frederick launched another spark from the vibrant US chocolate scene, though his adventure is now based in the Amazon region in Brazil, where his partner Diego owns 3 cacao plantations.
Frederick contributed a good twist on the earlier video interviews, and gave a good point on the differences amongst the more traditional European scene and the fresh initiatives in Northern America.

The Domori sales rep unfortunately wasn’t there though, and I also missed the French artist Carol Gillot, which I got to know through ParisBreakfasts.
A quick hello at Michel Cluizel returned made the friendly rep offer me bags of unroasted beans from their various single plantation beans, great to discover a taste.

The only real ‘downside’ of my visit was to find out that none of the brands were eventually prepared to meet my Choqoa Sampler orders: they simply were not able to sell me my large amount of orders – even on their stock for this mass fair! Being a little bit a victim of your overwhelming demand, I however settled some well worthy arrangements with them, opening up a lot of exciting future possibilities, and contributing a lot of learnings on distribution particularities.

With love from …

This year’s salon was full of superb moments meeting my chocolate heroes. Interviewing Francois Pralus, Stéphane Bonnat and Frederick Shilling gave thrilling sensations being so close on the chocolate scene. Especially the time spent with Clay Gordon left a lasting impression on me, all synthesized in some great footage to share with you soon!

Your Sampler is on its way and I’m hoping your little bit of extra patience will be rewarded with you finding –and sharing- new pleasures in chocolate sensations…