Tag Archives: Chocophile

Video: Interview with François Pralus at Salon du Chocolat

François Pralus has been inspiring and helping the cacao world forward to indulgent experiences in fine origin cacao bars. Personally I like his dark signature a lot. He makes you discover cacao in a bold way and at the same time explore the flavors that makes eacht bar so typically different, by interpreting regions and beans, and delivering a variety of typicalities that make the whole cacao experience so rich.

Pralus recently took some time at The Salon du Chocolat in Paris to offer us a brief video interview, joining my previous talks with Clay Gorden ‘The Chocophile’, Frederick Schilling from AMMA and Stéphane Bonnat. It took me some time to add the subtitling, but now at least all of you can enjoy his passion.

François takes his own angle on the same questions I’ve been asking all of the above cacao icons. He really hunts for high quality plantations, passionate people and aroma development. It’s very inspiring to see how different all of them respond and share their proper focus on building wonderfull chocolate stories.

Enjoy the short video interview with François Pralus (though I was a bit distracted), the last in the video interview series I shot at The Salon in Paris. I hope it makes you discover and appreciate his chocolate in a new way as well!

Video: Interview with Clay Gordon “The Chocophile” at Salon du Chocolat

Clay Gordon is a man I’ve been long looking forward to meet. With his great book ‘Discover Chocolate‘, Clay claimes and justifies is title of ‘Chocophile’. He’s also running the community “The Chocolate Life” and that’s where Clay reached out to meet me during his visit in Europe. So here’s the very first of a coming video interview series from Le Salon du Chocolat 2009 in Paris!

This US based evangelist for fine cacao was currently doing a chocolate tour in Europe, including the London Chocolate Week. I arrived at his hotel to meet him in the lobby, and after our first real life hello, we strolled towards the Salon area at opening time. After I registered and picked up a press card (hey, I blog!) we sat down wih a good coffee in the lounge and continued talking on all things chocolate. During this very inspiring chat Clay Gordon passionately talked about the chocolate industry, people enjoying chocolate, people having fun tasting & trying pairings, the required craftmanship to achieve great tasting bars, and some of the secrecy behind the cacao scenes. Clay truely knows every angle to cacao!

After more than an hour we ended the personal talking and I could -ahum- do my first video interview ever. I rapidly had big fun holding my Sony HD cam and I feel it’s a great synthesis of our meetup. Enjoy and you will sure grab for a good chocolate bar after his thoughts on passion, inspiration, and sharing fun.
So here’s the 10 minute interview with Clay ‘The Chocophile’ Gordon! I’m curious for your reactions as well.