Pierre Marcolini in Marou-land
Imagine you’re a busker, playing on a street corner somewhere off the beaten tracks and then Bruce Springsteen (or Neil Young… insert your favorite rock star name here) steps right up to you and says ‘hey kid, I like what you do with that guitar, how about we play something together’… This is how we felt when we heard that the great Pierre Marcolini, the most famous Belgian chocolate maker in the world, whom we’d met briefly at his stand at the Salon du Chocolat in Paris, wanted to meet us on his short visit to Vietnam.
Pierre Marcolini is a traditionally trained pastry and chocolate chef who has won several titles such as World Pastry Champion in 1995 and has opened a string of very successful shops in his name in Brussels, Paris, London, Tokyo… Not just that, but the man has charisma and his apparition at the Salon du Chocolat was greeted like that of a rock star, complete with Japanese girls shrieking his name! Now we also found out that beyond the great chocolate artist and the successful businessman there’s also a great guy who is driven by his passion for chocolate.
Pierre Marcolini wanted to know more about cacao in Vietnam. For a few years now, all of Marcolini’s chocolates have been made using his own couverture, most people don’t realize it but such an approach is really exceptional as most chocolatiers use couverture chocolate they buy from specialists such as Valrhona or Barry Callebaut. But Marcolini’s quest for perfect and different chocolate flavors has led him to search for perfect beans from far afield. And Vietnam is one of the chocolate world’s new frontiers.
Followed by a Belgian television crew, we took Pierre Marcolini to visit the farm of Mr Duc in Ba Ria province, about 80km from Saigon. This was the very farm that we found by luck, and the encounter that led us to making our own chocolate in Vietnam. Needless to say, this place is really special for us. Mr Duc is a gentle 64 year old farmer and although slightly built he is a strong man with a strong personality. This strength is also something we find in his cacao beans, that we use to make our Ba Ria 76% chocolate bar (the red one).
Mr Duc led us through his farm, showing the cacao trees that are drip-irrigated to prevent any waste of water and the large shed where cacao pods are opened and put in the fermentation boxes before being left to dry in the farm’s courtyard. We even got to see and taste Mr Duc’s amazing black pepper straight from the vine. Later, Mr Duc offered drinks of sweet and refreshing fresh cacao juice and several fruits from his garden. Finally at Pierre Marcolini’s request, we all tucked in a bar of our 76% Ba Ria chocolate before heading back.
That bar is made using Mr Duc’s beans. Pierre Marcolini found the chocolate to have a very fresh and distinctive taste with notes of citrus fruit, cardamon and cinnamon. We took that as a real compliment!
