My Chocolate Fantasy

Temptation from Amadei of Tuscany and the Annual Chocolate Show. Photo: Steven Richter.

The people who sell chocolate are not merely happy – I think of Jacques Torres, always smiling – they also seem wildly passionate and can be deeply poetic, if not mystical. Chana Krausz-Papp, who left selling wine to become the U.S. rep for Amadei chocolates, is no exception. Amadei is Tuscan chocolate, the most expensive chocolate in the world, she claims. It’s made in an area of Tuscany known as Chocolate Valley, near Pontedera. How often have I been to Tuscany? How many summers have we spent in Pietrasanta on the Tuscan seashore? No one ever mentioned Pontedera. No one ever spoke of Amadei.

Now I learn it is favored by the fussy patissier Pierre Hermé (over the snootiest French chocolate), the visionary Ferran Adria (surely there must be Spanish chocolate), Heston Blumenthal at Fat Duck (the English are notoriously chauvinistic about their chocolate too), and President Sarkozy, who mentioned it among his favorite Italian products. Closer to home, Per Se, Nobu, Fiamma, Daniel and Lever House are fans. Le Bernardin patissier Michael Liaskonis writes about it on his blog. And at Del Posto, they serve the chocolate in bar form, paring it with aged rums.

The Amadei story is romantic and dramatic. Brother and sister Cecilia and Alessio Tessieri, born into a family confectionary business, teethed on making pralines (what I call bon bons, or filled chocolates) and ultimately began producing their own chocolates from the bean itself. She trained to become one of the few women maitre chocolatiers in the world. He scours the globe in search of the best cacao beans, the best plantations in Central and South America and Madagascar, tying up an exclusive for Chuao cocoa from Venezuela.

In her enormous tote, Chana always has a stash of Amadei’s small 5 gram squares in assorted flavors, single origin crus, and of varying cacao pow, that she passes around after dinner. Hmmmm…Venezuela cru hits the spot after too much pizza, I promise you.

She offers to do a tasting for me. After the summer, I say.

As I’ve written, I am not an obsessed chocoholic. I love chocolate. One bite or three seems to me the perfect ending of a meal. But I like Jujee Fruits too, so a serious chocolate purist should probably not trust me. I’m guessing those hopelessly obsessed by chocolate will want to Google Amadei and taste for themselves anyway. It’s sold on-line by the bar and in stunning gift boxes.

Last week Chana came by, low key and soft-spoken, mellifluous – as if her mouth was already full of chocolate. My friend Pamela Morgan of Flavors has been chattering away about Xoçai, a healthy chocolate she is peddling with equal passion, so I nvited her to join us. “Xoçai,” says the box, “is rich in unprocessed, non-alkalized, non-fermented cacao powder.” It’s made with “extreme dark” Belgian chocolate, açai and blueberries, with more than half its calories in fat, even saturated fat. Pam is shocked when I point that out. It’s the açai, a powerful anti-oxidant, and the dark, unprocessed chocolate’s total flavonoids that help the body resist damage by free radicals, I’m supposed to be impressed by. An astonishing 1.008 mg. of total flavonoids per 100 calorie serving (3 small squares) and, according to the label, the ORAC value (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) per serving is 58,700 compared to 2,400 for blueberries. If I need an excuse to have chocolate with my blueberries, this is it.

Chana takes these thrilling health claims quite calmly, noting that Pamela’s chocolate has lecithin as an emulsifier, which Amadei would never, never, ever. “We don’t talk about the health aspect of chocolate,” she says, handing out bits of Amadei –“Let it melt on your tongue,” she begins her spiel.

“We are all about the sensuality of chocolate, the emotion, the pleasure of the senses.”

After the brown (or milk chocolate), the Toscano black 63%, the 70%, the Amadei 9, the grand crus of single variety beans – Grenada, Jamaica, Ecuador, Madagascar, Venezuela, the fabled Chuao – a few interruptions of Xoçai, comes the climactic Toscana red – extra bitter chocolate fondente, 70% cacoa with strawberries, raspberries and cherries. Chana smiles knowingly as she breaks off a chunk for each of us.

Oh dear heaven. I’ve found my chocolate. I cannot go on. Chana wisely folds her tent and her tote.

If you think you know everything there is to know about chocolate, you will surely want to meet Krausz-Papp. She will be telling the Amadei story and passing out samples to melt on your tongue at the 11th annual New York Chocolate Show from November 7-9 on Pier 94 (711 12th Avenue at 55th Street). It launches with a Chocolate Couture Collection – creations from designers working with pastry chefs and chocolatiers. There’s a KidZone and a Blackberry hand massage op. In the overstuffed shopping bag the promoters sent, I found white chocolate pops and cocoa butter skin cream, Berkshire bark and dark chocolate with chipotle, salt and popping candy. I’ve been giving it away as fast as I can.

The truth is, my afternoon with Chana and Pamela ended on a very scary note. Halfway home I disappeared into a fugue state, but kept on walking in my chocolate fog. I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. A sugar fit perhaps. I woke up in my own bed two hours later. I never did figure out what happened.

“I’m so glad you’re up,” the Road Food Warrior greeted me. “I was afraid to wake you, but it’s past time for dinner.” I stood up slowly. My brain was back. My pulse was normal. I felt myself again. We went out to dinner.

Amadei is available in New York at The World of Chocolate, Ideal Cheese, Sant Ambreous (pralines only), and The Chocolate Room (two locations) in Brooklyn.

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