Tag Archives: Pralus
Passion 2.0 in Paris, at the Salon du Chocolat

Passion 2.0 in Paris, at the Salon du Chocolat

by on November 1, 2008 in Trips

“Il est 5 heures Paris s’éveille, je n’ai pas sommeil”. It was precisely 5 AM in hometown Antwerp too when my alarm went off, timing was early but I was rise and shine even before my ringer went off. The timing and famous song of Jacques Dutronc couldn’t be more symbolic: going to the Salon in Paris was not only about this infamous chocolate fair itself, it was going back to the city that had me discover and experience the amazing world of pure dark chocolate bars, and moreover the art and craftsmanship required with chocolatiers. Heading back to Paris 10 years after this unforgettable moment, it seems my passion is ready to be unfolded and developed on a new level.

So we are back from Paris and here are some first impressions from this trip to a festive fair, so many things we encountered but only so few means to share this olfactory trip with you!

Paris Salon du Chocolat 2008

Together with Alison, an American friend passionate by food, we jumped on the Thalys to arrive at the fair precisely at 10.AM when doors went open. Friendly Noémie from Zaabär got me a complimentary entrance, and this was actually the first time we met in real, after many messages through FaceBook. Early birds, we had all the time and space to start exploring the fair, and decided to first make a helicopter view tour of the Salon, and keep the shopping and business networking in the afternoon.

The fair was more consumer oriented than we’d expected, however this also meant that every participant was doing its utmost best to showcase their chocolate pies and cacao sweets, show off pralines and bars, and this all in attracting stands and seducing environments. Soon we had checked the very chique boot of Michel Cluizel evoking a lot of craftsmanship, the presence of the Compagnia del Cioccolato representing Domori, Maglio and others, Pralus breathing passion, others went for fashion, spotted perfectionist haute couture chocolatiers from Tokyo, and enjoyed watching the Barry Callebaut World Chocolate Masters preparing wonderful sculptures.

In the afternoon we started our “Let’s get serious”-tour and got started shopping not only for ourselves, but also for the “Original Introduction Sampler” that I proposed to friends and fans. More details on that soon!
The numbers of bars and grams raised at record speed now, getting some dozens of bars at many famous and sought-after brands. I noticed correctly that both Domori and Pralus redesigned their packaging, and reworked their offerings. And armed with that and other knowledge, we also took the time to talk a lot about our passion with the people behind those brands, and we were really inspired by many of them. I gathered great stories, a glimp of a real view behind both passion and philosophy of the different ‘cacaofèvier’s’ and chocophiles.

Time swiftly passed by, our bags started groaning and our backs were moaning, but all the enthusiast people we met, the stories they shared, and the passion we all spread, gave us wings. To finish the day I had a short sniff of cacao and mint with Dominique Persoone from The Chocolate Line, which is a weird experience but you should try yourself too. And from Cluizel I got some original cacao beans of each of his plantations.

An exhausting but wonderful, inspiring and above all encouraging day to move on with Choqoa.com.

Preparing for “Le Salon du Chocolat” in Paris

by on October 22, 2008 in Trips

The “Salon du Chocolat” goes around worldwide with famous fairs in New York, Tokyo, Beijing, even Moscow, and next week shows in Paris with a 4 day fair, from October 29th till November 2nd. A one-way cacao Valhalla, the ultimate theme park, or eventual deception… I’m haven’t really got a clear view about what to expect from the 2008 “Salon du Chocolat“.

It is hard to imagine entering the halls in Portes de Versailles, that has more than of 12.000m² to offer for chocoholics, cacaophiles, and aficionados. I only know I’m going one day out of four, for the first time, and the plan is to discover more about artisan & origin chocolate explorations. With a vast range of all known top chocolatiers and artisan brands present at the fair, there sure must be lots of fun to share with other people.

The Paris team for the Salon conducted an amusing survey together with Le Figaro/Madame, on the French and their chocolate habits. Some fun facts:

  • Men and women, everyone prefers dark chocolate (50%), followed by milk chocolate (35%) and white chocolate (15%).
  • Solitaire or social? 24% of men do not share their munches … against 22%  of women. Shared with family, between lovers, then friends, chocolate however still remains primarily a pleasure that is offered to and experienced together.
  • 41% of women believe that eating chocolate gives them more pleasure than making love …
  • In buying habits, respondents like to buy their chocolate in priority from small but high quality artisan chocolatiers (48%) and in a much lesser extent from big industrial brands (23%).

I’ve been spotting the 400+ participants list, which includes some 140 chocolatiers, and I’m glad to see a whole range of favourites in place: Domori, Lindt, La Maison du Chocolat, Maison Bonnat, Michel Cluizel, NewTree, Phillipe Pascoët, Pralus and the Belgian new Zaabär too.
Some others to discover are: Nestlé, De Bondt and Cacao Barry (from Meulan). I’ll also seek after bars from Dagoba, and USA brands like De Vries, Scharffen Berger, Guittard, and maybe TCHO, although none of these are listed with a stand. Big misses are Amedei, Valrhona and German brands like Coppeneur.

I’ll keep you posted with writings later on!
Any other brands you think of are worth checking out?

Spreading the Passion

Spreading the Passion

by on October 20, 2008 in On Chocolate & Cacao, Reviews

Lately I’ve been ‘sacrificing’ quite a lot of my premium bars to my friends and family to invite them into the world of chocolate, or better the world of ‘my’ chocolate. Because the only way to really enjoy your passion is to share it with others and listen to their input. From the Dusseldorf Collection I already briefly reviewed the Hussel Madagascar, Pralus Venezuela, and the Neuhaus Ocumare, origin bars I had taste at several visits. I wrote a story about my nephew with the Michel Cluizel 1er Cru ‘Mangaro’ and also with a bunch of various people shared a Pralus Colombia, Domori’s Sur Del Lago Classificado and their Arriba, a Coppeneur Trinidad bar and finally also unwrapped a Valrhona Ampamakia 2007 vintage.

Spread the Passion

The Pralus Colombia was mild and fudgy but came with original flavours, again a typically dark roasted Pralus bar that tempts you to discover its terroir aromas. The first Coppeneur I tasted was a Trinidad, and though the first impression wasn’t delivering a lot of ‘wow’, it seemed to taste distinctively better the day after; is it because the cacao had had the time to acclimatize after being sealed in so long in its plastic foil? The Ampamakia 2007 was a known friend from Madagascar, whose mild fruity character and gentle texture pleases to many. Both the Domori’s were a big discovery, since they manage to create indulgent, well-tempered smooth bars that taste far from ‘chocolate’, and with their very expressive hyper-aromatic characters they are definitely an hate-love challenger brand to introduce to people.

Armed with a short introduction into origin chocolate, people were all curious to expect and experience something different, and tasted the chocolate chunks with patience. Almost all of them spontaneously started talking about the taste of cacao on other terms than good or bad, and put aside the ‘bitter’ cliché. I never pushed them into a certain feedback or direction, but on every moment I had offered a tasting, people were into describing various flavours and textures rather than nag on the bitterness of bars.
It works better if you immediately showcase more than one origin bar, so people can nibble from various aromas and experience the differences and character varieties instantly, which always brought the taste discussion on a higher level.

Spread the passion!

The Chocolate Secret of Ferran Adrià

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 :)

Pralus Venezuela 75%

Pralus Venezuela 75%

by on October 3, 2008 in Reviews

Pralus is one of my favourite cacao brands. I appreciate the complexity they manage to manage to mould in a single bar, which results in a exciting tasting adventure (almost) every time. Pralus bars are also very expressive and seldom mild in taste. This also means that even within the huge cacao varieties, you can have something like a ‘brand image’, a signature taste pattern you should be able to recognize through the whole range, much like the Haute Couture creative directors manage to achieve every season for their collections. (For the record, I’ve read the chique Amedei packaging is actually designed by the Chanel house)

Pralus Venezuela 75%

The Pralus Venezuela bar is one I estimate high in my favourites range. It’s a Pralus, it’s rather rough, but moreover Venezuela is close to the roots of cacao and used to be the world’s biggest cacao producer. And not to forget Chuao, a tiny village located in the northern coastal range of Venezuela, famous for its cacao plantations where some of the finest cocoa beans in the world are produced. More on Chuao later though… let’s focus on the Venezuela bar!

I tasted this 75% single origin bar a couple of days ago with friends, and upon unwrapping the bar, the smell that was released immediately took my attention from the chat we had to the bar I had in my hands. Next to the seducing scents, the colour was wonderfully deep dark red brown. This seduction of nose and eyes only gets better with the first medium soft bite, dragging along into a complex story of various savours and sensations.

As the dark redness of this bar forebodes, slightly bitter and dark cacao tones open the bouquet with power, though a slight dusty aroma also seems to hang around. The texture is not a smooth as e.g a Valrhona but nonetheless you have a rather creamy bar while it melts away. As it gently does so, it releases smooth aromas with butter, some very light acid tones, but without betraying its blackness with always coffee, woody, and leather in the foreground. Every bite is an opportunity to concentrate on a different aspect of the taste curvature, this is definitely not a simple bar.

Pralus Venezuela 75%

My friends are totally not into dark chocolate, let alone single origin bars. However being a enthusiast cacao evangelist, I tempted them into tasting a small chunk from both the Hussel Bejofo I had already on the table, and the Pralus Venezuela, so at least they could experience the huge differences in the universe of cacao bars.

Friend B. was very surprised by the rich bouquet each of both bars offered, and spotted the differences in taste and feel right away. Funny enough he spontaneously began comparing this new experience with wine tasting, which I found very amusing and interesting, since that what this blog is all about. Taking dark single origins bars to friends, evangelise the ‘new’ chocolate and changing the ‘bitter’ prejudices into sweet ‘experiences’.