Give your taste buds the experience of a lifetime by trying these chocolatiers’ creations.
Whether you read the book or watched the film, all of us were fascinated by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We wanted to tour around the factory just like the kids with the golden tickets did and get a taste of that chocolate river. But alas, it was all fiction. Much like we’ll never get our own letter to Hogwarts, we’ll also never get a golden ticket, no matter how many bars of chocolate we eat.
But just because Willy Wonka doesn’t exist doesn’t mean you can’t indulge in decadent chocolate. There are some amazing real-life chocolatiers (chocolate makers) that are creating equally magical chocolates. Here is a list of some of the best chocolatiers across the world whose chocolates you cannot miss.
Teuscher from Switzerland
Teuscher is a family-run business in Zurich, Switzerland founded by the late Adolf Teuscher over 80 years ago. Teuscher makes hundreds of different varieties of chocolates, each with carefully selected cocoa, marzipan, fruits and nuts, among other ingredients. One of the company’s most famous chocolates is their champagne truffle—a dark chocolate ganache (mixture of chocolate and cream) blended with Dom Pérignon Champagne. The company makes its chocolates in small batches and ships them daily to its branches in Zurich, Geneva, Europe, America, Canada, Asia and the Middle East.
Laurent Gerbaud Chocolatier from Belgium
Laurent Gerbaud runs a chocolate shop in Brussels and gives traditional Belgian chocolate a new twist with his chocolate creations. Gerbaud’s chocolates are more about spices, fruits and flavors than about the taste of the chocolate itself. He attributes the unique flavor pallet of his chocolates to his experience traveling in China, where he found that people preferred their sweets to be less sugary. Much like the previous entry on this list, Gerbaud’s chocolates contain specially curated ingredients, like Madagascar pepper, Shanghai orange, the Izmir fig and the Taggiasche black olive. It is perhaps the uniqueness of his chocolates that led to him winning the best chocolatier in Brussels award in 2021.
Richard Donnelly Fine Chocolates from the U.S.
Richard Donnelly Fine Chocolates is a chocolate-making business from California in the United States. The founder, Richard Donnelly, learned the craft of chocolate making in Paris. He creates two very different varieties of chocolates—one being simple bars with no flavors besides the chocolate itself and the other being rich flavorful bars infused with hazelnuts, almonds, toffee as well as seasonal spices. Some of the unique flavors you can taste in Donnelly’s chocolates include cardamom, cinnamon, coconut, lavender, chipotle, saffron, cardamom and Earl Grey tea. Donnelly is especially particular about the quality of the chocolates he produces and thus limits production to 50 pounds (around 22.6 kg) of chocolate each day.
Amedei from Italy
Founded in 1990 by the world’s first female master chocolatier Cecilia Tessieri, Amedei is a chocolate production company based in Tuscany, Italy. The company creates some of the most expensive chocolates in the world. The company’s most expensive chocolate Porcelana (which uses translucent white cocoa beans) retails for US$15-US$20 for a 50 gram bar and US$90 for a one-kilogram bar. Amedei’s chocolate has also been used in the making of expensive and decadent chocolate creations, such as a US$27,000 cupcake in Dubai as well as a US$1,000 sundae at New York’s Serendipity. The company is a six-time winner of the UK Academy of Chocolate’s Gold Bean award.
Godiva from Belgium
The final entry on this list is the kind of chocolate you can get your hands on no matter where you live. Godiva is a chocolate production company owned and operated by the Draps family in Brussels, Belgium since the 1920s. The company’s name pays homage to Lady Godiva, who rode around the streets of Coventry, Britain without clothing to urge that the citizens’ taxes be lifted. The company is well known for its truffles, pralines and chocolate-dipped strawberries. In 1968, Godiva was appointed the official chocolatier to the royal court of Belgium. Today, it is a well-recognized global brand with over 600 boutiques across the world.
Well, there you have it! These are the top five best chocolatiers who keep on infusing love and care into their chocolates that you absolutely cannot miss. These chocolatiers carefully choose ingredients and put exceptional effort into every single bar of chocolate that lands in your hand. If you want to buy some quality chocolate this World Chocolate Day, why not give one of these chocolatiers a try?
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