More than 20 years of scientific research, analyzing chocolate production projects, aimed at high quality have enabled me to gain a really important experience that can reduce criticality studies on the existing production process to a very short time and develop great skills in designing new production processes, from large sizes to small Bean to Bar productions.

Since 1997, the production of Chocolate on its own i.e., the transformation from seed to Tablet has required quite a lot of research efforts, especially at times when making chocolate on one’s own seemed more like idiocy than fashion!

Today, 20 years later, it has been discovered that producing chocolate with supply chain control is a good thing, but it took years of effort to be able to reflect the category that was a possible way to distinguish between ambitious people and opportunistic people.

The knowledge required to produce chocolate is very high; one cannot produce good chocolate without the proper skills, and these skills are very difficult to find in the market, as a historical gap of more than 40 years has caused two generations to lose contact, resulting in an incredible loss of knowledge.

The extraordinary effort made in this regard and the determined persistence for scientific knowledge have enabled me to reconstruct almost totally what was culturally lost during this period. Thanks to historical texts, knowledge found by conversing with elderly chocolatiers and Engineers of the time.

Reconstructing knowledge made it possible to go back to the essentials of Chocolate production and to discover what incredible mistakes industrial evolution made for the sole purpose of producing in less time and for the sole purpose of reducing the costs of Industrial processing, but not least to discover the industrial aberrations invented mainly to mitigate the extraordinary mistakes granted in agriculture.

Modern chocolate making must start from a scientific understanding of cocoa as a Noble raw material and as such to be processed.

Processing cocoa is a complex matter, but depending on the needs there are solutions, the important thing is to be clear what the true mission of the project is, whether to produce high-quality chocolate, produce chocolate with innovation factors, or produce chocolate for the sole purpose of communication-media.

Each of these reasons can be addressed intelligently, applying appropriate solutions in order to avoid wasted money and or unwarranted and sometimes unnecessary economic efforts.

The ability to analyze the process, allows me to help the company design ad ok plants for every need and help the company choose the best equipment according to its needs, as well as train the staff in the processing steps.

A training session in knowledge of raw materials and a platform that can provide raw materials in the quantity and quality suitable for the chosen project is also available.

“My Chocolate” Project

In addition We can offer an original and UNIQUE support such as “My Chocolate” a really special and inexpensive way for those companies who would like to be able to make their own chocolate but lack the experience, equipment or financial resources to take on a totally obscure adventure like making chocolate.

With our project we can: produce the chocolate with the company at our workshop, with the formulation of the recipe by mutual agreement and according to the sensibility of the Chocolatier, In three days it is done: a training session to discover the secrets of the world’s finest cocoa, formulate the best recipe together. Toasting cocoa and making chocolate, in a completely artisanal way and together, so that the Chocolatier can take photos of himself during the process, have the testimony and knowledge that it was really you who made that chocolate, with the collaboration of one of the top Chocolatiers in the World at your service, to ensure that every step is the best possible and taken care of in every detail, so that not even a refrain of flavor or aroma is lost. After three days of processing you can go home with “Your Chocolate” in the form you most desire and at a price absolutely commensurate with the quality and originality you desire.

The Best cocoa in the world does not exist!

I have always been saying that the best chocolate in the world does not exist, but sometimes I am taken not very seriously, it is the only certain truth in this world.

Cocoa grows in several countries around the world, and each botanical variety has different peculiarities. In some cases the botanical types change, and in other cases only the microenvironment, microclimate, and or other external factors.

The one thing that makes the real difference between good (even great) cocoa and poor (sometimes even lousy) cocoa is always the post-harvest treatment. There are cocoa varieties that by historical tradition, not even by scientific knowledge, turn out to be of excellent quality, enjoy a satisfactory market price, and the supply chain of that cocoa grows, improves, and has economic potential to improve.

In other cases the cocoa is of poor quality, (botany has nothing to do with it) but the history of that process on closer analysis turns out to be truly catastrophic. Those producers are not getting sufficient payments, the supply chain is suffering, and no one has resources to turn things around.

Various associations, NGOs, National and International, European and American entities invest mountains of money to promote solidarity projects, but they often fail to yield satisfactory results.

This situation is caused by the institutions’ lack of knowledge of the crisis factors in the places designated for aid, the lack of expertise of supposed experts, and sometimes the total incompetence of characters, who living on the fringes of chocolate pass themselves off as experts in the cocoa process, sometimes creating real disasters and painful failures of projects that originally would have been in real need of support. Last but not least I must include the greed of people who in various capacities have some power or institutional introductions who for a variety of reasons offer themselves as guarantors, but then once cashed in they deflect without giving due support to the funded project.

Over the past 15 years I have overseen several international projects, thanks to the IILA Associazione Italo Latino Americana, which over the years has invested in and promoted a number of projects for which I have been a designer or scientific technical advisor, such as in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Colombia.

In Sri Lanka, in 2005, in the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami I conceived and designed a Humanitarian initiative, aimed at helping the people affected by the tragedy Sri Lanka being a producer of cocoa, but of a special kind of cocoa, namely a cocoa that already appeared in historical texts in the 19th century as the ideal cocoa for the production of Gianduia. For that project I involved the Piedmont Region, Civil Defense, Banca Etica, La Confartigianato Piemonte, Pasticceria Internazionale ICEI ONG Milanese, which coordinated and managed the work, and some friends who actively contributed to the success of this project Such as Giancarlo, Guido, Jagath, Daniela and Massimo. Today that center turns 10 years old and has become the Island’s cocoa hub and they export worldwide at an economic value (300 percent more expensive) such that more than 200 families can live and progress in Organic cocoa and herbs.

In Ecuador Esmeraldas Region , since December 2016 I have been following the Cacao Justo project, for ACCRA Milanese NGO with international projects, the purpose is to characterize the cocoa of the Region with the aim of deriving a flavor map from it so that we can obtain a certified cocoa of origin, a kind of cocoa PDO. For such a project, I made a mission and made some important suggestions to their production managers who, somewhat empirically, were making mistakes that could make their cocoa, which is actually capable of expressing an extraordinary aroma, unappreciative. For such a project, I developed a strategy with the new “BMP” Bessone Method Patent, which can give certainty to cocoa producers and enable their cocoa to have a higher level of commercial value, which can enable families and the organizations themselves to derive satisfactory sustainability.

Tanzania Mbingu In 2016 I started following a new project in southern Tanzania, where a group of friends (Marco, Enzo, Judith) decided to invest in a cocoa production center run by Franciscan Sisters. The convent works to support local people and provides cultural education and family support. Unfortunately, even for them the real problem is the profitability of the fields in quantity and for the value given by the mediocre quality. In this project we are planning the meticulous application of the BMP method but with a focus on cocoa intended for the Biomedical and Medical industry. In this center we will produce cocoa with special developments of nutraceutical substances given the special attention and pliability of the scientific method.

Brazil Bahia Ilhéus. I made my first real journey into agricultural science in Ilhéus, attending CEPLAC where I was able to learn more about cocoa seedlings and the various methods of propagating the cocoa species. Attending various agricultural technicians and competent FCA technicians allowed me to carry out in-depth studies on proper fermentation and drying practices. Numerous trips and work done in this context have enabled me to practice the fundamentals of the BMP method with extreme success.

Brazil Para In 2009 at the urging of the Region of Tuscany I carried out a fact-finding mission to Brazil in the state of Pará, on that trip I was able to evaluate other ways of growing cocoa namely cocoa in Varzea, cultivation in river sedge where growing cocoa is totally different from the usual since we are dealing with plants that live perpetually in a water bath and harvesting is done with spears. Good and particular quality cocoa, with the moisture problem to deal with, all the processing takes place on stilts. The purpose of this mission was to take a picture of the cocoa situation in the State of Para’ with the aim of assessing the sustainability of an industrial project in Italian-Brazilian collaboration.

Venezuela, in 5 years there have been at least 7 missions to Venezuela. The cocoa country par excellence, where the historical culture of processing allows the prized botanical varieties to express themselves to the fullest. In Venezuela I studied postharvest factors and for the government evaluated the feasibility of certification of origin. Strategic collaboration with the Italo-Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce I have been conducting tasting courses and training small cocoa and chocolate producers with the aim of helping them grow, such work has paid off if today some of my students are assorted to the world news for extraordinary qualifying success.

Technical and scientific collaboration with the well-known company KKao Real, which in addition to being Testimonial of the Reto Cacao project and animator of training courses for the most prestigious Chefs and Chocolatiers of Venezuela. The scientific-technical collaboration continues fruitfully for the design of the new production line of Filled Chocolates and high quality bars.

Sao T ome The work started in Sao Tome dates back as far as 2001 when I did the first operational mission in the field, collaboration with the local research center regarding the effectiveness of the chocolate production method. For years I have been working with the Honorary Consulate of Sao Tome in France.