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bite
chocolate
T
he story of La Maison du Chocolat
begins on the prestigious rue du
Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris,
where a chocolatier visionary
born in the French Basque region in 1927,
with an exceptional palate and a great wine
connoisseur, opened the first boutique
dedicated exclusively to chocolate in 1977.
He had previously learned his trade of
chocolatiering in Bayonne, before travelling
to Switzerland to perfect his art at the
C.O.B.A School. Upon returning to Paris,
he opened a pastry-confection business, La
Marquise de Presles in 1952, which was to be
the forerunner for the renowned La Maison
du Chocolat. Inside this new boutique was a
wine cellar that provided ideal conditions to
preserve chocolate and became a temple of
chocolate creation.
The visionary who founded La Maison
du Chocolat is Robert Linxe, dubbed “The
Sorcerer of Ganache” for his discovery of
ganache, a silky texture made from chocolate
and fresh cream, and for his stamp of nobility
on chocolate as an exceptional ingredient.
He is also known for reinterpreting the
taste of chocolate, making it less sweet, less
childlike, and more adult, and by liberating the
excesses of sugar and cream, he birthed the
French passion for dark chocolate and the
art of degustation to be enjoyed anytime of
the year. For the first time in the history of
chocolate, Robert Linxe discovered how to
showcase the exemplary savoir-faire of the
French chocolatier internationally, gaining
recognition for innovation whilst preserving
the grand French tradition.
For the last 35 years, the ganache
of La Maison du Chocolat has been the
emblematic of the luxury chocolate à la
française. Today, under the impetus of
master chef Nicolas Cloiseau, La Maison
du Chocolat continues to uphold the
excellence of the renowned ganache
and has become the brand of reference
for luxury chocolate around the world.
As Robert Linxe once said,“To become
a chocolatier, one must first learn how
to taste chocolate.” To support this
statement, the chocolatier brand has
compiled ‘the ten commandments of L a
Maison du Chocolat’ to savour the perfect
tasting chocolate.These include: a very good
chocolate should not be too dark or too
dull, a good chocolate should have a very thin
coating and the coating should not be crunchy
but melt in the mouth,chocolate should never
be sharp, overly bitter or pungent, the taste of
a chocolate should linger on the palate and a
good chocolate is defined by the quality of the
chocolate used and not the cocoa percentage.
La Maison du Chocolat source their
ingredients from the exclusive cacao
plantations in Venezuela, Ecuador, the
JADA BROOKES
DISCOVERS THE UNIVERSE AND
SAVOIR-FAIRE OF LA MAISONDU CHOCOLAT, CREATOR
OF LEGENDARYAND DELICIOUS CHOCOLATES.
Caribbean,Africa and Madagascar and selects
only the finest cacao beans and best vintages.
Their raw materials such as hazelnuts and
almonds in the pralines, fruit and spices
to fresh cream in the ganaches are of the
finest selection. Like any fine wine or whisky,
maturity is essential when producing quality
chocolate and so the creation of a new
‘chocolate couverture’ takes more than a
year and a half of work, to achieve the perfect
balance between bitterness, acidity, and fruit
or floral aromatic intensity. In keeping with
the exceptional level of mastery, the
chocolates are made by hand in an artisanal
The House of
La Maison Du Chocolat: