CHOCOLAT

It’s Mother’s Day and because mothers and chocolate are synonymous (well, have you bought a box of chocolates for your Mum this year? I thought so!) here is a little chocolate indulgence from my recent book Pardon My French!

The car is pointed south. In a few days we will be in Provence.

I am on a mission this morning, though. I want to visit Valrhona, the famous chocolate manufacturer. I’m also relieved that never again will I have to agonise over the spelling. Is it ‘h’ before ‘r’, or the other way, round? Now I know its location at Tain-l’Hermitage an hour or so south of here on the eastern side of the Rhône river, I’ll never forget.

Actually I am also continuing a sub-theme – a personal self-indulgent thread, seeking out the finest chocolate makers in France. Since Paris we have been meting out the chocolates we acquired from Rochoux, but these have dwindled. Reinforcements are needed, urgently.

Which reminds me of yesterday afternoon in Lyon, persevering with our map, fighting against what seemed like an endless tide of peak hour traffic, to locate Bernachon, a third-generation fixture on true chocoholics’ radars, on the far bank of the Rhône. This superior chocolatier, much revered in this city, has acquired quite a following, particularly in the well-heeled precinct where he set up business over half a century ago.

This is especially apparent as we slip into Bernachon Passion to sample their famous hot chocolat. Towards the back of the tea salon a dozen or so elderly ladies on a kilojoule-rich little outing are seated at a long table, and the room holds plenty of couples as well. It’s Lyon’s answer to Paris’s Ladurée.

Gordon orders the house-special – the hot chocolate with chantilly cream, as rich as its price, and suddenly overcome by the idea of it all, I opt instead for a freshly-squeezed pampelmousse (grapefruit), which is almost as pricey but refreshingly wholesome. The décor is feminine – apricot granite table tops complementing a paler shade on the walls – yet the hefty gold-edged glass doors add a heady sense of refinement.

Next door in the original confiserie-patisserie, Bernachon House, several equally spaced attendants in smart uniforms stand ready to serve. The long glass-fronted display cabinet holds whole iced and chocolate-ruffled cakes alongside dainty confections of chocolate and pastry and other sweetmeats displayed like jewellery. Still with Ladurée in my head, I choose a macaron and two bite-sized unnamed chocolate-topped tarts.

I point at them, wordlessly.

“Ici?” asks the attendant. Here?

“Oui,” is all I can manage, tongue-tied in the presence of such bounty.

No excuse then, I tell myself after lunch the next day, to be lining up again for more food, but I figure I’ll most likely only ever be at Valrhona once and I should make the most of it.

An iron suspension pedestrian bridge as well as a road bridge over the river connects sister-city Tournon with Tain-l’Hermitage. Valrhona’s shop and factory, on avenue du President Roosevelt, is quite unassuming considering the wealth behind those etched glass doors. A simple sign on the wall outside shows a cocoa pod breaking open to reveal its seeds and the slogan ‘Aux Sources du Grand Chocolat’. Ah, yes!

In 1924 Chef Guironnet a patissier from Tournon, began a chocolate factory, however it was not until 1984 that the famous Guanaja, made with 70 percent cocoa solids, was presented to the eager world. At Valrhona I learn that the cocoa tree blossoms all over itself, lavishing buds on its branches and trunk, but despite this excess, only one flower in every three hundred will produce the all-important cocoa pod.

Like wines, Valrhona has defined several cocoa ‘grand crus’ around the world. When applied to vineyards this term means literally ‘great growth’, more generally meaning exceptional potential. The cocoa versions have been identified in different plantations in diverse geographic locations, such as Guanaja, Manjari, and Caraïbe.

And while all this is immensely impressive, shallow creature that I am, the generous bowls of sample chocolates (whole ones too, not shaved fragments) placed strategically around the showroom attract my interest more. Around the showroom famous blocks and bars and individual chocolates are for sale, and busloads of customers keep arriving and filling plastic shopping baskets with their purchases. I notice that those bowls of freebies are being constantly refilled, too.

Not wishing to appear ungrateful for this largesse, I also sample a fair number of them. I taste chocolate from Trinidad, Madagascar, Venezuela and so many other exotic places, that my mind begins to swim. Or am I simply OD-ing on chocolate?

I buy some too – as gifts. Well, that’s my alibi anyway. I then wonder how they’ll survive several more weeks of summer heat and car travel. Maybe I might have to eat them myself after all.

The variety is enough to have Willy Wonka agog in admiration: toasted slivers of almonds are collected in chocolate-y little heaps, and there are cherry liqueur-centred bonbons, and others concealing fruit, nut, praline or unidentified centres. Discs, balls, triangles and squares, some polished mirror-smooth, others embossed with gold transfers, gently rolled in cocoa powder, or encased in a coloured shell of fondant, they are all here.

A good number of the bars remain elegantly bare of additives, relying simply on the magical name of their exotic origin or the richness of their percentage of cocoa. The sparkling shelves hold light, dark, and every shade in-between of chocolate, while glass-fronted counters are moodily-lit to showcase the tinier individual morsels set out on trays. So innocent. So addictive. There seems no end to the ways this decadent dark substance can be moulded and folded, draped, dipped and displayed.

Just when it could hardly improve, I learn that Valrhona has a chocolate school on the street behind the shop and factory. We hurry around to see it, but class is in, and the language barrier becomes a problem, so the receptionist mutely hands us a booklet. Inside there is a picture of the six smiling, be-toqued members of the teaching team.

What’s more, I learn, if I ever find myself back here with time on my hands, it might be possible to take a class, as several two- and three-day courses, as well as some much shorter ones are regularly available. In two hours I could learn how to make a chocolate gateau or charlotte, or I just might book in for an afternoon or full day of chocolate-play.