NEWS

6 April 2009

Paladar is a special section in one of the most traditional Brazilian newspapers, 'O Estadão de São Paulo’, aimed totally at gastronomy and published every Thursday. This supplement, despite it being relatively new to the market, less than five years old, it has earned great respect from members of the public who are addicted to gastronomy, as well as the most renowned Brazilian chefs.

The edition from April 2nd was entirely devoted to chocolate, but more specially to Easter Eggs. The article entitled "How to make an egg, by a renowned professional" has also introduced new chocolatiers who studied in Europe and who use imported chocolate.

The Easter Eggs tasting session was focused on the chocolate of a world-class professional, highlighting only the best products in the market. The team of journalists decided to choose the one that would become the "Paladar Egg" - 11 different chocolate blends were proposed and Fabrice Lenud's task was to produce them for a blind test. As the newspaper supplement was going to "baptize" the egg with its brand, the raw materials used in these 11 eggs should be only of the three current major brands in the market: Valrhona, Callebault and Belcolade. The chocolates came from different regions, were origin chocolates, and had different percentages of cocoa. The three Belcolade Collection Origin chocolates chosen by Chef Raul Concer, who works for Puratos Brasil, were: Noir Collection Uganda 80, Noir Collection Peru 64 and Lait Collection Vanuatu 44.

Before the final verdict, during the evaluation, the comments of the group of judges were merciless, eliminating the eggs one after another... there were only two final competitors: the egg from the French company Valrhona, with 100% Manjari chocolate and one from Belcolade!

Valrhona was ranked 2nd in the session, but the greatest and unanimous champion was the egg made only with Belcolade (44% milk chocolate and 71% dark chocolate).

Belcolade won the contest, and this year holds the title Paladar Egg. With such a result, Belcolade is increasingly stronger in the Brazilian market because of its quality in regard to taste and high performance.

According to Fabrice Lenud, a French chocolate connoisseur, who uses only Valhrona and Calebault in his store, and was fascinated by the technical quality of the Belcolade product, said that what mostly impressed him was: both the intensity of shine of Belcolade, which beats the other two competitors, and also how easily it melted, and how quickly it crystallized. Both characteristics were essential to place Belcolade first, and also in the perception of most professional chocolatiers.