François Pralus
François Pralus is a chocolatier in Roanne, in the Loire, and one of the few French houses that make chocolate from the bean rather than from bought-in couverture. Dried cacao beans arrive from South America, Africa and the Indian Ocean; they are roasted, ground, refined and molded in Roanne into a range of single-origin bars, most of them dark at 75%, that read like an atlas of cacao.
The house
The story begins with a pâtisserie. Auguste Pralus, born in 1920 in the nearby village of Mars, opened his shop in Roanne in 1948 with his wife Noëlie. In 1955 he was awarded the title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France as a pastry chef and chocolatier, and the same year he created the Praluline, a brioche studded with pink pralines that remains a signature of the house.
His son François took over in 1988. As a young man in the late 1970s he had trained at Bernachon, and it was there that his passion for making chocolate from the bean took hold, setting the direction of everything that followed. Under François, Pralus became a bean-to-bar maker: the workshop sources dried beans of the three great cacao families, Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario, from named origins, and controls every step from roasting to the finished tablet. The range today counts around twenty single-origin bars at 75%, a 100% pure Criollo from Madagascar, a rare few blends, and a single milk chocolate, Mélissa, at 45%.
The most personal chapter is in Madagascar. François Pralus planted a 17-hectare plantation of Criollo cacao on the island and harvested its first beans in 2012. Around twenty farmers work the land, with a school and medical care on site. It means the house is not only a chocolate maker but, for its Madagascar bars, a grower as well. Back in Roanne, the factory roof carries 750 solar panels that supply up to a third of its energy.
What they make
Clipperton carries a selection of the bars, all organic, all bean to bar, wrapped in the house's plain paper.
- Single origins at 75% — the tangy, red-fruited Madagascar 75%, the rare Cuba 75%, the floral Nacional-bean Ecuador 75%, plus Peru, Brazil, Tanzania, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
- The extremes — Madagascar 100%, pure cocoa paste with no sugar, and Fortissima 80%, the first recipe François created.
- Milk — Mélissa 45%, made with Madagascar Criollo.
The full selection is in the François Pralus collection.
Why Clipperton chose them
Clipperton is a family importer, and we look for makers who do the whole job themselves. Very few chocolatiers roast their own beans; fewer still grow them. Pralus does both, from a mid-sized town in the Loire rather than a capital, and does it with a father's MOF and a son's obsession behind it. The bars are the best argument: line up Madagascar, Cuba and Ecuador at the same 75%, taste them side by side, and the idea of "dark chocolate" as a single flavor disappears. That is the kind of discovery we want to bring to Canada and the United States.
