Point of order, Mr Speaker:
Perugia categorically does NOT produce world-class chocolate. It is famous as the home of the Perugina company (now owned by Nestle), which produces mass-market chocolate. Perugina's chocolate is of decent but unspectacular quality - in much the same way as Cadbury chocolate in the UK or even Hershey in the US.
But "world-class" it most certainly is not. For world-class chocolate in Italy, one has to look to the mighty Amedei in Pontedera, Tuscany. Amedei sources its cacao from individual highly-vetted estates across the world, and almost exclusively uses only Trinitario or Criollo beans - rather than the far blander (but higher-yield) Forastero variety used by virtually every mass-market chocolate manufacturer (including Perugina).
I've visited Amedei and and met Cecilia Tessieri (the founder and master-chocolatier of the company) - as well as several other of the most prestigious chocolate conchers/manufacturers in the world. Perugina is not one of them.
As you might tell, I'm quite interested in high-quality chocolate
I am *ahem* aware that they don't grow cocoa beans in Italy
Getting good beans (i.e. well-grown, well-fermented and well-dried Criollo or Trinitario beans) is an art in itself: all the good producers have people on the ground in the tropics all the time to monitor quality. Your suggestion that "all beans are the same" is incorrect, I can assure you. As I said before, the mass-market producers use cheaper, blander Forastero beans almost exclusively (yes, there are different varietals of cocoa bean!), and tend to buy them on the open commodities markets. The top producers, on the other hand, deal direct with individual plantations that harvest the best beans in the best conditions.
But even aside from getting the best beans, there's an extraordinary art to roasting, crushing, rolling, blending, conching, tempering and setting them - all of which takes place on the producer's premises rather than in or near the growing plantations. The roasting and conching processes are especially critical to the quality of the finished product.
All chocolate requires extra fat to be added to the crushed bean in order to produce the correct emulsion, and of course sugar is required to offset the bitterness of the bean. Cheaper producers (including Perugina) add vegetable fats and a high proportion of sugar - resulting in a chocolate that, while shiny and with a good "crack", has a particular sticky mouth-feel and a bland, sweet taste.
In contrast, the best producers add additional cocoa butter to the crushed beans (when cocoa beans are crushed, they produce cocoa butter and cocoa solids), and a much smaller ratio of sugar. The resulting product is true high-quality chocolate: a rich, buttery, smooth mouth-feel, and the full flavour of cacao with only a small contribution of balancing sweetness.
Ooops, I'm off-piste again! No more chocolate diversions, I promise!
Excellent reply again Kwill.
Point of order, Mr Speaker:
Perugia categorically does NOT produce world-class chocolate. It is famous as the home of the Perugina company (now owned by Nestle), which produces mass-market chocolate. Perugina's chocolate is of decent but unspectacular quality - in much the same way as Cadbury chocolate in the UK or even Hershey in the US.
But "world-class" it most certainly is not. For world-class chocolate in Italy, one has to look to the mighty Amedei in Pontedera, Tuscany. Amedei sources its cacao from individual highly-vetted estates across the world, and almost exclusively uses only Trinitario or Criollo beans - rather than the far blander (but higher-yield) Forastero variety used by virtually every mass-market chocolate manufacturer (including Perugina).
I've visited Amedei and and met Cecilia Tessieri (the founder and master-chocolatier of the company) - as well as several other of the most prestigious chocolate conchers/manufacturers in the world. Perugina is not one of them.
As you might tell, I'm quite interested in high-quality chocolate
I am *ahem* aware that they don't grow cocoa beans in Italy
Getting good beans (i.e. well-grown, well-fermented and well-dried Criollo or Trinitario beans) is an art in itself: all the good producers have people on the ground in the tropics all the time to monitor quality. Your suggestion that "all beans are the same" is incorrect, I can assure you. As I said before, the mass-market* producers use cheaper, blander Forastero beans almost exclusively (yes, there are different varietals of cocoa bean!), and tend to buy them on the open commodities markets. The top producers, on the other hand, deal direct with individual plantations that harvest the best beans in the best conditions, and who would never dream of selling to the mass-market producers. These artisan beans cost an awful lot more at the plantation gate than the vast homogenous lorry-loads that the mass-market producers receive each day.
But even aside from getting the best beans, there's an extraordinary art to roasting, crushing, rolling, blending, conching, tempering and setting them - all of which takes place on the producer's premises rather than in or near the growing plantations. The roasting and conching processes are especially critical to the quality of the finished product.
All chocolate requires extra fat to be added to the crushed bean in order to produce the correct emulsion, and of course sugar is required to offset the bitterness of the bean. Cheaper producers (including Perugina) add vegetable fats and a high proportion of sugar - resulting in a chocolate that, while shiny and with a good "crack", has a particular sticky mouth-feel and a bland, sweet taste.
In contrast, the best producers add additional cocoa butter to the crushed beans (when cocoa beans are crushed, they produce cocoa butter and cocoa solids), and a much smaller ratio of sugar. The resulting product is true high-quality chocolate: a rich, buttery, smooth mouth-feel, and the full flavour of cacao with only a small contribution of balancing sweetness.
Ooops, I'm off-piste again! No more chocolate diversions, I promise
* By the way, "mass-market" refers to pretty much every single high-volume chocolate producer in the world. Including the "higher-end-mass-market" producers such as Suchard or Lindt. What I'm talking about when I refer to top-end chocolate producers is a tiny number of very small producers around the world, who produce in comparatively tiny volumes and are therefore never seen in supermarkets or advertising anywhere. I would guess that most people have never heard of ANY of the true high-end chocolate producers. There are probably no more than two dozen in all, based across the world. Perhaps the one that people are most likely to have heard of is the French producer Valrhona.
