Easter has been recently, and in all likelihood, there are still scraps of chocolate eggs in our homes. But this year the most expensive chocolate egg (without any surprises inside) has been auctioned for £7,000. It was created by London chocolatier William Curley and weighs about 50 kg. The egg was made using mostly Made in Italy chocolate, specifically chocolate from Amedei Toscana, a Pontedera-based artisan chocolate maker that has won the most Golden Bean awards at the Academy Chocolate in London in just over three decades.
Cecilia Tessieri Rabassi: the world’s first female maître chocolatier
It all started with a woman, Cecilia Tessieri Rabassi. Born in 1967, she was the first woman maître chocolatier in the world and opened a workshop in Pontedera (PI) in 1990 with her brother Alessio.
What exactly does maître chocolatier mean? Cecilia clarifies this in an interview with ‘Comunicaffè’: ‘In the French sense, the maître is the only chocolatier who selects the beans and processes them into a finished product. Chocolatiers, on the other hand, only process the product. Since its origins, the maître has been the one who took care of the raw material, a mix of oenologist and agronomist.‘
Cecilia and her brother chose their maternal grandmother’s name for the brand and focused on researching and processing the best cocoa beans. Over the years, thanks to Cecilia’s talent, they have come to select and control entire production chains in Venezuela in the Chuao area, where the best cocoa in the world comes from.
Cocoa: a valuable food
‘With great cocoa, you can make great chocolate, and to value great chocolate means to value the cocoa beans and the work of the farmers in the countries where cocoa is grown’. Cecilia said in an interview with Marie Claire.
And she adds: ‘I have always had the idea that chocolate was a truly precious thing to discover, not trivial as it may have been in those days. This is my best and most vivid memory of chocolate.’
The chocolate of tomorrow
Two years ago, Cecilia sold the company to create her atelier, where she makes the ‘chocolate of tomorrow’, a chocolate that brings out its preciousness and value with new tasting methods and customised recipes.
Today, Amedei, headquartered in Pontedera, is and remains an excellence in quality artisan chocolate. It has won prestigious awards, produces 120 different products (including the award-winning Toscano black 70), has dozens of employees, has a revenue of millions of euros, and exports 55% of its production!
Congratulations to those who bring Italian talent and chocolate to the world!
Discover also Tuscany’s other Made in Italy outstanding products.