Belgium is the home of our number 1 chocolate
Pierre Marcolini has for many years owned the chocolate heart of GloriousMe. Why, we try to explain in the following article. But actually, you can only taste it.
It’s the terroir
The more in-depth the study of chocolate, the more the differences in taste come to light. Does the basic chocolate taste rather heavy and fat, soft or hard, spicy or fruity?
Pierre Marcolini likes to compare chocolate to wine. If one orders red wine in a restaurant, one would not be satisfied with the designation “red wine” either.
He hopes that in the future, connoisseurs will pay increasing attention to the origin and purity of chocolate and develop their own chocolate tastes.
It is worth looking at the back of the chocolate wrapper
On some chocolates, the percentage of cocoa is recorded. On others, there is no percentage. Not good. From a cocoa content of 40 percent, the differences in taste can be tasted.
The cocoa content is also a matter of price. The more one knows about chocolate, as you gentle reader, the more one prefers to enjoy a small excellent portion rather than a large bar that is essentially a combination of fats and flavors with little or no transparency about its supply chain.
Pierre Marcolini – our number 1
GloriousMe’s favorite chocolatier, Belgian Pierre Marcolini, has been championing the cause of sustainable chocolate for years, sourcing his cocoa beans from cocoa farms that do not employ children, do not use glyphosate, and do not plant hybrid CCN51 trees on their farms.
CCN51 cacao plants are very fast growing cacao plants bred to resist a dangerous pest of the cacao plant (not exactly politically correct named Witches Broom).
The plant resistant to this pest has a high harvest volume and produces the first fruits after 18 months, instead of 4-5 years. But it provides far less flavor compared to traditional cocoa plants.
As with many other fruits and vegetables, there is a fear that the biodiversity of chocolate will be lost if over time only this plant is used.
Would you want to eat only Granny Smith apples in the future? The largest chocolate gene bank in Trinidad houses 2,300 chocolate germplasm species.
The above-mentioned three criteria of commitment to greater transparency and to the preservation of biodiversity alone result in purchase prices that are twice as high as the international market price.
It doesn’t always have to be champagne – champagne truffles do the trick too
The cocoa beans from Educador, Madagascar or Cuba, which are roasted in-house at Pierre Marcolini, all have their own flavor, and it’s fun to taste the differences in chocolate bars by comparison.
If you don’t live in Antwerp, Brussels, Dubai, Tokyo, Shanghai or Hangzhou and can’t store in the Pierre Marcolini store there, Pierre Marcolini will also deliver the chocolate delicacies to your home via the well-functioning online store.
In typical GloriousMe fashion, we like to include a packet of champagne truffles with our orders every now and then. When you open the package, you are initially a little surprised at how small and delicate the Pierre Marcolini champagne truffles are. Admittedly, the powdered sugar with which the truffles are sprinkled is also a bit difficult to transport via courier.
But the taste compensates for everything. Small, fine, delicious. Tasting these truffles, one begins to wonder why some others contain such intense flavors that probably originate in a test tube.
Honor to whom honor is due
On October 27, 2020, Pierre Marcolini was named Best Past ry Chef in the World by the World Pastry Stars jury. Congratulations!
We are delighted with Piere Marcolini, whom we discovered 18 years ago in London, for this recognition and for having been able to enjoy his chocolate creations so many times over the years.
