Slow chocolate

Guido Gobino is currently one of the most interesting chocolatiers working in artisanal chocolate production in Italy and indeed the world. The careful selection of the best ingredients, meticulous control of the entire production chain, the hunt for new flavors that still respect tradition, cutting-edge technology and the attention to packaging design are just some of the elements that characterize Gobino’s production.

A long-time friend of Slow Food, Guido Gobino has been moving closer to the association, ever since—with Terra Madre and the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity—it shifted its priority to agriculture and began working all over the world, including with hundreds of small-scale cacao producers in Latin America. In the year his business celebrates 50 years of family management, Gobino has decided to forge an alliance with the Slow Food Presidia and start using cacao from Chontalpa, in Mexico, for a dedicated line of chocolate.

(Fave de Cacao - Cocoa beans cleaned, debacterized, then roasted whole. They are then unshelled by hand and enrobed with dark chocolate and dredged with icing sugar)

The project has also been started to raise the profile of Chontalpa, recognized as the birthplace of criollo cacao, the rarest and most prized variety, renowned around the world. The state of Tabasco is Mexico’s leading cacao producer: 67 percent of its surface area is dedicated to the crop and it is responsible for around 80 percent of national production. Though cacao is central to the lives of Chontalpa’s small-scale farmers, every day they must struggle against a hostile economic and commercial system.

Their difficulty in accessing credit and distance from the national market make it very hard for them to receive technical assistance, solve plant disease problems, process the cacao with suitable machinery and technology and produce a semi-processed product that would guarantee them an income proportionate to their efforts. The producers only have access to the local market, where middlemen impose their own often unfavorable prices. It becomes impossible to translate the actual quality of the raw material into market value.

Gobino is committed to buying cacao directly from the small-scale Presidium producers and supporting them by paying a fair price, which goes entirely to the producers, without any middlemen taking a cut. The chocolate will be made following a production protocol drawn up by the producers and Slow Food, and will be the first to bear the Slow Food Presidium brand: truly a good, clean and fair chocolate.

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