Prize Chocolates Discovered in Tuscany

Hello friend,

I came across a lovely site that searches around the world for the best in Chocolates to share with their patrons. It is the Chocolate Trading Company in the UK.
http://www.chocolatetradingco.com/moreinfo.asp?ID=256

Their search found Amedie Chocolates in Tuscany. Amedei of Tuscany, Italy, was founded by brother & sister Cecilia and Alessio Tessieri in 1990. With an admirable passion and determination coupled with the highest standards of craftsmanship and creativity, Amedei today is considered to produce some of the finest chocolate in the world. Amedei, particularly in the last year, has become known around the world for their chocolate and one of the many reasons for their high acclaim is a strong and honest desire to create the best chocolate at whatever cost.

Amedei's most prized chocolate comes in the forms of the single origin, and to be precise, single variety, Porcelana bar and Porcelana neapolitans and as the name suggests is created solely from the very rare and valuable Porcelana cocoa bean, the purest form of the Criollo cocoa bean (Criollo meaning “native”). This particular cocoa bean is revered around the world for its superior taste and with such short supply, a mere 3,000 kilos a year, Amedei only produces 20,000 chocolate bars, each numbered by hand. Amedei has conducted in-depth agronomic research and genetic testing on Porcelana and today it buys up a substantial quantity of all that is grown, paying up to eight times more than the lower grade Forastero cocoa, the most widely grown and used cocoa in the world.

The next prized single origin chocolate from Amedei comes in the forms of the Chuao bar and Chuao neapolitans, created solely from the world famous Chuao cocoa bean with an exceptional fruity flavour and unique character. This particular cocoa bean legend named after the plantation where it is grown on Venezuela's coast and therefore, technically, these chocolates can be more accurately referred to as Single Estate, provides another unique chocolate tasting experience and one Amedei has worked to perfection.

Up until a few years ago, the Chuao cocoa was the exclusive domain of the great French chocolate makers. Now Amedei has managed to break this long-standing tradition and is today one of the very few, if not solely in the world today, creating chocolate using this precious cocoa bean.The Amedei range of blended chocolate bars are created from the two favored cocoa beans amongst the premium chocolate makers, from the three main cocoa types, the Trinitario and Criollo. Amedei’s Tuscan Black 70% bar Cecilia (master chocolate maker at Amedei) describes as “all the flavour that chocolate is capable of giving” and is her own personal favorite amongst the finely blended dark 66% and 63% chocolate bars created by Amedei.

Chocolate Trading Company's aim is to provide people with that opportunity to experience and enjoy the finest chocolates available. In the world of fine chocolate it’s not just the fine flavors alone that make one chocolate stand out from another, the importance of texture plays a large role in the majority of peoples opinions of what makes the best chocolate. Amedei again has perfected these processes, and most importantly for this particular requirement it is the grinding and conching process, which plays a large role in creating a silky smooth chocolate with no gritty or flakey textures.

To create such a smooth tasting experience Amedei grinds their cocoa beans to no more than 15 microns, your mouth can only detect a granule size of over 18 microns and industry standards are approximately 30 microns. The grinding of the cocoa at Amedei is still performed on a traditional granite stone mill.

As a result of all this meticulous care, Amedei was voted overwhelmingly by the customers of the Chocolate Trading Company as their choice for “Best Chocolate Awards- 2004.” The winning dark chocolate bar with 75% of the votes was-AMEDEI, PORCELANA, 70% Dark Chocolate Bar.

So check out the site and see all that is offered. They do ship to the US. Their e-mail address for questions is- mailto:chocolatesenquiries@chocolatetradingco.com

I love finding exciting and unique chocolate sites to share with you. If you have a favorite, please let me know so we can share them with others.

Have a beautiful day, and God bless,
Donna