Amedei: temptation

Amedei is the courage to pursue a dream. It is a new generation of chocolate producers with the know-how that was passed down from a family who processes confectionery raw materials, with a dream that was inherited from grandmother Amedei, a Tuscany-born woman who was fond of cooking, flavours and taste.

“I can resist everything except temptations”. How does it feel to be a temptation?
I must say that I don’t dislike the idea of being a devil that tempts people, since the quotation is taken from Oscar Wilde who was one of the most brilliant minds of Western philosophy. Of course, in the Western world chocolate represents sin, the dream of finding paradise lost – just to remain in the literary sphere! – a golden age where senses, pleasure, flesh and mind merge into a sin-free dimension. To us Westerners, chocolate is a cultural, intellectual experience, it is an idea. I like the idea – if you say so – of representing “temptation” in this field!

Ours is the society of quantity; how many of us can really appreciate quality?
Today there is a strong flattening of tastes, a homogenisation of the palate to a standard mediocre flavour. Our product has a strong, decisive character, so it may happen that a person who isn’t used to perceiving a wide range of flavours doesn’t even recognise it as chocolate. Basically, those who are used to the standardised “Easter egg” flavour, where all you can taste is the sweetness and often also a bit of carton, might find our chocolate to be too strong. We are in any case deeply engaged in educating people to appreciate flavour diversity.

Where’s the breakeven between pleasure and addiction?
One thing’s for sure: a person who normally stuffs himself with food wouldn’t be able to eat a great amount of our dark chocolate: it’s too strong and elaborate. Actually, it is the first bites that produce greatest satisfaction, a few instants of absolute pleasure. Only a few bites, and then it becomes pointless, you lose the perception and with it, the pleasure. As a matter of fact, we’ve named our latest production “meditation pralines”!

There has been a lot of talk about reducing the minimum dose of cocoa, increasing the percentage of additives, European legislation; to what extent does all of this affect Amedei products? Opportunities or hindrances?
It affects our work only very slightly. If we were to concentrate only on following the rules, we would never achieve our goal, i.e. the dream of producing something superior. Of course, if you’re faced with the problem of limiting your costs or preserving your products for long periods, then it helps quite a bit to play with the percentages of additives and cocoa. The point is that the more you depart from the rules, the higher the risk of producing something that has practically nothing to do with chocolate.

What is your relation with cocoa producers?
We are directly in contact with cocoa growers, to whom we guarantee a very good purchasing price (even five times higher than the international market price) in exchange for high quality crop, something we absolutely cannot do without. Unfortunately, however, an increasing number of cocoa growers are flattening their crop quality to meet the lower standards required by major buyers who need only great quantities of low quality crop at extremely reduced costs. We do not belong to that group of producers, there is still too much confusion.

How does a company based on passion manage?
For example, when we designed our packaging, every expert we turned to for advice said that our idea was totally wrong, that it went against the trends, that it conveyed the wrong perception. But we stubbornly continued along our own path, the path of passion. It was a great success.

Who selects and decides the flavour of Amedei chocolates?
The whole family joins in, but I must admit that my sister is the one mostly involved in the testing phase and she’s also the one suggesting a lot of tricks and hints that are fundamental to field agronomic research activities and strategies.
In any case, we have trained some “company palates” for continuous comparison purposes but mainly to receive constructive judgements about the products that come out of the Amedei laboratories. We certainly do not follow the market research trend. It is too complicated and, to be frank – let me repeat this – the Italian market and consumers are still not “trained” enough to judge chocolate which is no more nor less elusive than wine, where you have the vineyard and the cellar and where there are different flavours, tannins, perfumes, aftertastes, cru and cuvée, wines made from different types of grapes or from single vines, autochthonous vines, clone selections… We hope to make the market grow, and therefore no longer be so lonely!