Tag Archives | Michel Cluizel

The perfect tasting of an innocent child

By on October 13, 2008 in On Chocolate & Cacao

When I returned home this weekend from a family trip, my 8 year old nephew wanted to watch a video before bringing him back to his mom. I inserted the company presentation from Belcolade that I just received from a friend who works at Puratos/Belcolade as a Communication Manager.

My nephew was instantly absorbed by the world of chocolate and he started mouthwatering for a bite, and so I offered him a piece of a Michel Cluizel “1er Cru de Plantation Mangaro” that laid on the table. I actually did this on purpose to see how a little child would react on something so different from the supermarket quality chocolate people are used to buy. Just like the previously reviewed  Hussel Bejofo Madagascar, the 1er Cru Mangaro is cultivated in the rich valley of the Sambirano river, where Cluizel’s plantation flourishes on the land of a former mango tree forest.

Micel Cluizel. 1er Cru de Plantation - Mangaro

He was particularly delighted by the taste and I asked him eventually in an innocent way to describe me what exactly he tasted. To my fun and surprise he closed his eyes and said that only when you close your eyes you taste the aromas so much better. Where did he pick that up?! I insisted and asked him what aromas exactly he could discover in this Michel Cluizel bar… he rolled with his eyes and closed them back and soon after regaling his small chunk, promptly said to taste strawberry, closed his eyes again and a little later also reported oranges! I couldn’t resist laughing out of admiration…
This 8 years young expert evaluated the taste of chocolate with fruity descriptions! This in itself was already amazing, but also how close did he came: The Cluizel Mangaro effectively has tones of citrus and orange in particular, and though strawberry maybe too sweet a description, the bar is being classified with a fruity character and hints of raspberries.

I was astonished by the fact that even a child described this chocolate in a very original way, immediately discovering the rich variations in fruitiness, and hence that he evaluated the bar far away from anything bitter that is usually a prejudice when it comes to ‘dark’ chocolate. I guess I’ll have to hire my nephew whenever I may eventually start a cacao business :-)

The Chocolate Secret of Ferran Adrià

By on October 9, 2008 in Marketing, On Chocolate & Cacao

That was the title on the cover of a magazine. The founder of El Bulli had a chocolate secret? Even for half an interesting page I had to buy that magazine! The article eventually is a nice introduction into the world of the purest fine dark origin cacao, and breathes my observations on the evolution chocolate has gone through during the latest years.

For long the label ‘Belgium’ evoked an atmosphere of best quality chocolate, linked to the craftsmanship of artisan chocolatiers that made ‘pralines‘, chocolate shapes filled with all kinds of flavoured fillings ranging from elaborated nuts, marzipan, pastes to liquor creams. And with a bunch of world class cacao producing brands on our soil too, we sure have a heritage in chocolate that would fill more than one book. Moreover even a lot of our tourism is driven by this chocolate attitude.
However times change, and since long to me Belgium is no longer a country of dark chocolate, but one of ‘just’ sweet chocolates. This small re-interpretation of the word “chocolate” vs. “chocolates” in English implies a whole lot of differences, it are even to very different worlds. Even our most famous “praliniers” like Pierre Marcolini and Dominique Persoone have actually (very) little to do with cacao or chocolate: they all focus on pushing and experimenting with flavours under the thin chocolate umbrella.

Amedei Collection

This article in Gentleman‘s magazine appropriately puts one of the world’s top cacao brands in the spotlight: Amedei, the house of Alessio and Cecilia Tessieri. Brother and sister Tessieri build their brand after their learning period at the french master chocolatier Valrhona. For the record, Valrhona was the first chocolate brand ever to label a bar ‘Grand Cru‘. The marketing term was coined when the company launched the first single origin bar in 1986 (Guanaja 70%, a mixture from South America).
Since Tessieri left Valrhona and to take revenge for their split, they started to work from Tuscany on what became the world’s premium on chocolate, based on the finest single origin selection of Chuao and Porcelana cacaobeans. Since long Chuao is a tiny village located in the northern coastal range of Venezuela, where beans of a very rare quality are harvested. Valhrona used to be the main taker of the Chuao yields, bit through very hard negotiations and a diabolic price war, Amedei kicked Valrhona from Chuao and obtained the monopoly on the most desirable cacao beans in the world. It’s still unclear where brands like Bonnat get their Chuao beans from now for their signature bars.

In this niche of top level chocolate we also find competitors like Michel Cluizel, Domori, ScharffenBerger, Pralus and some more, but what makes them special is the fact that they work with single estate cacao, and control the process “from bean to bar”. They control the quality of each harvest, buy at the source or even run their own plantations. Secondly they do not rely on blends to maintain a stable taste pattern, but work with the yields of a single harvest. This results in a pure uncontaminated taste that allows variations in aromas depending on the harvest, just like in wine vintages. Valrhona effectively has 3 bars that are launched by single estate and by year: the Grand Couva, Palmira and Ampamakia. I’ve been buying them since 2005, and I’m looking forward to buy the 2008 edition on my trip to Paris later this year.

Valrhona. Single Estate 2007 editions of Grand Couva, Ampamakia & Palmira

For connaisseurs, the Amedei is range is estimated to be the best in the world, lauded by the french Maître Chocolatier Pierre Hermé and the bespoken Ferran Adrià, chef of the world famous El Bulli restaurant in Spain. When I checked the Wikipedia entry for Amedei, to my surprise and pleasure the picture that accompanied the article was a photo of me that I actually took for my Afficionado collection! I bite that one :)

Bonnat 100%

By on September 28, 2008 in Reviews

Following the earlier post of the 100% in Paris experience, I thought is was a good moment to take out the 100% Cacao bar from Chocolat Bonnat. Amidst the white wrapped bars that Bonnat offers with different origin varieties, the 100% bar firmly stands out with its bright red packaging. It actually has a very high Charlie & The Chocolate Factory feeling. If you look at the shape and design of the bar – ready to break off  bite ready chunks -  you’ll probably recognize its structure from the current Choqoa blog header image. Bonnat has a simple and classic looking bar, with in the middle a bigger area reserved for the signature. But how does it perform?

(Photo by Everjean)

Upon breaking a piece off, the first smell already announces this is going to be a very bitter bar with short powerful touches of raw cacaobeans and spices. The tempering is great. The taste curve starts rather flat, and only briefly releases a first impression of what’s about to come. Then the taste experience softens down away, and even almost disappears. The bar then melts further and makes a striking come back with deep cacao scents, where it reveals a very strong character, opens up its full aromas, with a biting bitterness mostly at the end.

It’s a bitter bar for sure, that runs dry your mouth, with an aroma that relates a little to artichokes. The Bonnat 100% reminds of Cluizel’s Noir Infini, though I think Cluizel tasting experience focuses on variety in tones of aromas, and the Bonnat’s strength is a variation of bitterness. I liked to try out this red wrapped Bonnat, though I found this bar less expressively tastefull. It’s bitterness is its strenght, but also its prevails over taste.

The bar also had some clear fat blooming on it, but it was easily wiped off.

(Photo by Everjean)

The Dusseldorf Collection

By on September 23, 2008 in Trips

Here is a quick shot of the brands and bars I found in some shops on my cacao safari in Dusseldorf from last week. Expect more postings on this collection soon as I’ll munch bar by bar…. It was really fun to spend my money on some of the most exclusive bars that I had never found in a store before!

The Dusseldorf Collection

Especially the exquisite golden Domori tablets, including the famous Porcelana, are a great acquisition. I could just not resist buying the whole range at once, including the Blend series. I’m also looking forward to taste the Coppeneur bars, which are also new to me. The Tsachila bag may be interesting too, since it is made by wild cacao beans collected in nature by local indians as opposed to farm cultivated beans.

On a quest for the 100% bar

By on September 23, 2008 in Trips

Some 8 or 9 years ago, when I only just started chasing dark cacao bars, I was still focusing on at how much percentage the bar came. In my mind, the more cacao, the better so the hunt was open to find that 100% cacao bar.

Soon after, I spent some time in Paris and jumped into every chocolate store I ran across, and with so many chocolatiers in that beloved city, it didn’t take much time to find a 100% pure cacao bar. I don’t remember the name of the shop, but I’ll never forget that first bite:
I was actually disappointed, the taste of it was very much like putting black sand in your mouth, the cacao crawled like raw oil from tooth to tooth, and rather than tasting something, this 100% cacaobar had the effect of 7 espresso’s on me!

Loaded on this cacao energy  boost, I continued my quest and that’s when I discovered a small store from Michel Cluizel in 201, rue Saint-Honoré. I hadn’t heard of him before, but the wide range of origin bars drew my attention. And Cluizel had this very tiny bar: the “Noir Infini” at 99%, 30 grams.
This one tasted a whole lot different. You had to let the cacao do its work while keeping it long enough in your mouth, but you actually could enjoy some of the deepest cacao aromes. The bar was unsweetened, bitter, very bitter, but delivered a pleasant and powerfull tasting experience.

When these 2 tasting experiences were rather extreme, they were also very different. The most important thing I’ve learned in those days in Paris was that cacao comes with a lot of expertise, and offers many many experiments with varieties of blends, beans, roastings, percentages etc. and that it takes a lot of craftsmanship to build a well balanced dark bar.