Past Newsletters
Vol 3 No 2

In Pursuit of Chocolate

French Chocolate Bars from Michel Cluizel

This month we take great pleasure in bringing you some of the most sought after chocolate in the world. These rich selections hail from France and Spain - 2 countries known for their expertise in the wonderfully, woozy world of l'amour - a fitting choice for the month of February. We hope you enjoy our selections and invite you to share your enjoyment of these sumptuous chocolates with someone you love. No significant other? Again, we invite you to share these intoxicating confections with someone you love - you won't be singing St. Valentines hymn alone for long.

February's featured chocolates start with a delectable tasting adventure designed to assist you in developing and/or validating your chocolate palate. Michel Cluizel, one of the world's most renowned chocolatiers created these bars, each of which has a distinctly different level of cocoa content:

Chocolate with Hazelnuts - 33% cocoa

Chocolate with Cocoa Nibs - 60% cocoa

Chocolate - 72% cocoa

To compare the flavors and aromas, begin with the chocolate that has the lowest cocoa content, and listen to the flavors to experience how the cocoa percent changes the chocolate expressions. Most American commercial chocolate is milk chocolate, and by adding milk and lowering the cacao content, it’s less costly to produce. Many aficionados like higher cocoa chocolate without milk, but if you want to taste a near perfect example of a milk chocolate, Michel Cluizel is an outstanding choice.

The 33% bar is creamy and rich, and you can still taste complex chocolate flavor lurking behind the curtain of sweet, soft milk. Like all good chocolate, the fine flavor lingers long after the piece has melted in your mouth. In the 60% bar, Michel blends several beans, and the flavor notes are intertwined and subdued, giving a fuller, but smoothly rich tasting experience. Michel's 72% bar is a lesson in dark chocolate for all aficionados. One that ends nicely with a strong chocolate flavor and bitter edge, its lingering nuances will bring you pleasure long after indulging in it.

Meet Michel Cluizel

It is in the south of Normandy where Michel, his two sons and two daughters, who have all inherited the great French chocolate tradition, create their innovative masterpieces. In 1948, Michel Cluizel joined his father and became a chocolate maker. Today, Cluizel’s family business is one of the last independent companies to manufacture chocolate from the very beginning of the process. Fifty years of professional experience has created a master’s touch applied to all stages of production.

Michel Cluizel is the only chocolatier in France that still makes his own couverture (blocks of chocolate ready to be melted and formed into confections). The other French chocolatiers purchase their couverture from corporate giants… concerned with finance, not flavor.

The last of his kind… working with varietal beans from his own farms in nearly every producing country: Sumatra, Venezuela, Ghana, Java, and the Ivory Coast among others, Cluizel and his progeny are producing some of the most interesting chocolates in the world.

To meet the increasing demand for more full-flavored chocolates, Cluizel offers superb quality dark and milk chocolate with new and unique flavors. Indeed, he is the only chocolatier in the world who offers dark chocolates with 85% and 99% cacao content, and two milk chocolates containing 50%! And they are divine

Rabitos, a Spanish Delicacy

These "bonbons" are made of dried figs filled with liquor and chocolate truffle filling, and then the entire fig, including the stem is dipped in chocolate. The delicacy you are about to experience has been awarded the distinctive Quality Mark Alimentos de Extremadura from The Direction of Commerce and Agrarian Industries of Extremadura. We suggest that when eating the figs, slowly bite through to enjoy each layer…chocolate, fig, and filling.

Rabitos are made in Almoharin in the Spanish region of Extremadura, which is in the southwestern corner of Spain. ... an area that is traditionally known for its scrumptious figs. 15 artisans make these Rabitos, and the production is limited to approximately 70,000 kg. The bon-bons are made with a variety of fig called the Pajarito. The Pajarito fig is unique to this part of Spain due to the fact that the warm climate enables the fig to ripen in a short period of time. This results in a very small fig that is mellow in flavor but full of concentrated sweetness, it also means the hundreds of seeds inside are tiny, so it has a different texture than you might expect - and one that we're sure you'll relish.

Giving Chocolate on Valentines Day
What's Chocolate got to do with Love?

Valentine's Day, a winter celebration of love, is named for three St. Valentines, all of whom died horrible martyr's deaths years and years ago. So where's the connection with Valentine's Day and chocolate? The 3 saints all died before chocolate arrived on the shores of the mother country. Reliable sources say chocolate came from the ancient Aztecs in what is now Mexico, where it was considered a royal aphrodisiac.

The beginnings of our modern Valentine's Day, most likely, was in the Middle Ages, in England and France, when it was believed that in the second week of the second month birds began their mating calls. In the early days most consumers in France thought chocolate was a "barbarous and noxious drug," until the time the French court embraced it after the Paris faculty of medicine approved it as a beneficial potion. Pope Pius V considered cocoa liquid so vile tasting that he decreed the drinking of it would not break the communion fast. Back then, most chocolate was consumed, and appreciated, in liquid form. The Aztec king Montezuma drank liquid chocolate all day to enhance his libido.

And on Feb. 14, 1929 Al Capone's gang gunned down seven members of Bugs Moran's gang in Chicago in what is now called "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre." Obviously, it had nothing to do with chocolate.

But no matter. Even if the historical connection between Valentines Day and chocolate cannot be unearthed, it is as sure as the sun sets that the aphrodisiac qualities of this dark, light, bitter, sweet treat will always drum up the heady, high sensations of being in love. What better confection to give on the day that pays homage to the same?

Chocolate and Love
From 'The Cook's Encyclopedia of Chocolate'
By Christine McFadden and Christine France

Chocolate has long been associated with passion and its reputation as an aphrodisiac can be traced back to the days of the Aztecs and the Spanish conquistadors. Conclusions were obviously drawn from the Emperor Montezuma's liking for copious flagons of chocolate before retiring to his harem. However, as observer Bernal Diaz del Catillo was careful to point out in his memoirs: "It (chocolate) was said to have aphrodisiac properties, but we did not pay any attention to this detail."

In "The True History of Chocolate" authors Sophie and Michael Coe state that the idea that Montezuma needed sexual stimulants was a Spanish obsession for which there was no factual basis. The conquistadors apparently suffered from constipation and "searched for native Mexican laxatives as avidly as they did for aphrodisiacs." However, once the rumor that chocolate was an aphrodisiac had taken root, there was no stopping it. When chocolate eventually appeared in Europe, eighteenth-century society took to it with suspicious enthusiasm.

Historical sources abound with tales of chocolate being used as an aphrodisiac. Casanova thought that hot chocolate was "the elixir of love," and drank it instead of champagne! It may well be that the unshakable belief of the Spanish had something to do with chocolate being an ingredient in that notorious aphrodisiac "Spanish Fly." In the following tale, the Marquis de Sade uses both chocolate and Spanish Fly to amuse his guests at a ball: "Into the dessert he slipped chocolate pastilles so good that a number of people devoured them... but he had mixed in some Spanish fly... those who ate the pastilles began to burn with unchaste ardor... Even the most respectable of women were unable to resist the uterine rage that stirred within them. And so it was the M. de Sade enjoyed the favors of his sister-in-law."

The Great Inflamer

Brandon Head, in "The Food of the Gods," reported that even after chocolate had become widely accepted as a nourishing beverage, it was still regarded by some"as a violent inflamer of passions, which should be prohibited to the monks." In 1905 a journalist writing in the "British Spectator" issued dire warnings: "I shall also advise my fair readers to be in a particular manner careful how they meddle with romances, chocolates, novels, and the like inflamers, which look upon as very dangerous to be made use of..."

Sensual Association

Although contemporary scientific research suggests that chocolate does not contain substances of a directly aphrodisiac nature, modern advertising clearly links chocolate with sensuality and sexuality. With the exception of chunky "macho" chocolate products, or situations in which the product is being used as a healthy, energy-boosting snack, chocolate is invariably depicted as a "naughty" indulgence, appearing in scenes heavy with sexual innuendo.

Advertising also demonstrates a definite gender bias by specifically targeting women as the primary users. Most advertisements show chocolate being enjoyed by beautiful women, or gifts of chocolate being offered to them by a man.

The association between women, sensuality and chocolate was reinforced by the movies, too. A common image in the 1930s was the glamorous femme fatale, usually blonde and usually draped on satin sheets, languorously working her way through a lavish box of chocolates.

This association between chocolate and women perpetuated the association between chocolate and romantic love, as shown on Perugina's classic Baci box. Baci means "kisses" in Italian, and since the chocolates first appeared in 1922 they have been exchanged as gifts between lovers who look for the romantic message hidden beneath the foil wrapper of each chocolate.

Chocolate and Childhood

This association with love and nurture, but not necessarily passion, was also exploited by manufacturers. Chocolate cake mixes feature sentimental scenes of mother in the kitchen on their boxes; the earliest cocoa tins portrayed nursemaids or even parents serving nourishing mugs of chocolate to young children, and advertising made much of the wholesomeness of chocolate with posters of healthy, lively children enjoying cups of chocolate in the fresh air. The first chocolate boxes showed sentimental images of pretty young girls, flowers and kittens. Chocolate plays a large part in childhood the world over. Christmas treats, Easter eggs, birthday presents, party gifts, rewards or bribes from parents coaxing their offspring to behave well. Encouraged as most of us are to be passionate about chocolate from an early age, it is no wonder we carry that ardor with us through childhood and beyond.

Homeopathic "Proving" of Chocolate

Experimental "provings" of chocolate by homeopaths clearly indicate its stimulating effect. One experiment conducted with a decoction of roasted ground cacao beans in boiling water produced "an excitement of the nervous system similar to that caused by a strong infusion of black coffee" and "an excited state of the circulation, shown by an accelerated pulse." Interestingly, when the same decoction was made with unroasted beans neither effect was noticeable, leading the provers to conclude that the physiological changes were caused by aromatic substances released during roasting.