Raw-materials and manufacturing processes

Our Products are hand-made on a small scale, with only raw materials of great quality and without dyes or preservers (soy lecithin for instance...). Consequently they have a unique taste and a marvellous smell but they are perishable so, they need special and appropriate cares.

You will find this bias of authenticity and creativity in all the products of our range. Generation after generation, Debauve & Gallais is today proud to ensure you a rigorous selection of its raw materials and a choice of manufacturing processes in which modernity does not yield anything to the respect nobility cocoa.

"What is health? It is chocolate."
(Brillat-Savarin)
Since its opening the house Debauve & Gallais differentiated itself from all the other existing chocolatiers: instead of using imported cocoas of the Spanish colonies less expensive but also less tasty, it ordered and used broad beans of Caracas, Maracaibo, Magdelaine, Soconusco and Guayaquil. Instead of producing sweetened chocolate, it opened the way of the black chocolate, so specific of the French taste.

Pharmacist of the King Louis XVI, Mr. Debauve was indeed always concerned with the questions of health and, faithful to its motto "Utile dulci" (Horatio), he proposed a range "of health chocolates": Chocolate of afflicted with the Ambergris, chocolate with the catechu whose the stomachic virtues were celebrated or chocolate made of Iceland lichens relevent for chest diseases. His nephew, Antoine Gallais, opened the way of instantaneous chocolate with Théréobrome, cold milk chocolate made at the minute which was worth the praises of Faculty.

This originality was greeted by the most discerning and beautiful feathers of the French gastronomy to start with Brillat-Savarin which, dice 1825, wrote in its "Physiology of the taste": "the chocolates of Mr. Debauve owe their supremacy with a good choice of materials, with a will closes that nothing inferior came out of his manufacture and to the glance of the Master who embraces all the details of manufacture"

This time-proof success is measured with the seniority of the catalogue of the House whose certain products go back to its foundation! Thus the well-known Pistoles of Marie-Antoinette made as of the opening of the first store, prepared with orgeat cream, almond oil or orange tree flower.

Selection of the products and manufactoring processes. In accordance with its tradition, the chocolate factory uses only raw materials of great quality among which appear the Criollos broad beans, the Piedmont hazel nuts, the périgord nuts, the turkey grapes, the spain almonds, the Turin chestnuts or the Antilles Rum...
It produces a chocolate without concession whose nobility is preserved by the weak sugar addition, the exclusion of any dye, conservative or other additive. As she like to recall it, Paule Cuvelier who succeeded to the Debauve & Gallais' presidency in 1989, "our chocolate is thus guaranteed without lecithin of soya, additive which, if it gives a bright appearance to the chocolate deteriorates, altered the taste and the original virtues of health of the cocoa which have, from immemorial time, makes the reputation of the oldest french House of chocolates".

Since the foundation, Debauve & Gallais improved the manufactoring processes used at the time. Thus M. Debauve designed a machine with marble and granite cylindres to crush broad beans without altering their savour which was worth to him an official distinction in the accordance with the encouragement to industry.

Today like yesterday, our manufactoring processes uses the most sophisticated techniques in chocolate factory, in which traditional materials such that copper preserve the tradition of the taste. But this modernity should not make forget that the quality of the products is above all the result of the work of craftsmen in love with their job and animated of a constant desire to reach perfection.

Practical consequences: an appropriate logistic dedicated to the product.

The access of a Partner to the different ranges of Products depends on its status: restricted to ranges 0 (chocolates Cases with coat of arms bags), 2 (chocolate Bars), 3 (Solid Squares) and 9 (Accessories) for the Day Partner, the access is enlarged to the 10 (0 to 9) ranges of Products for the Full Partner,according to the terms of the Bilateral Agreement to be negociated with the S.A.S Debauve et Gallais.
Our products being manufactured on an hand-made small scale and the orders being never fulfil from our stocks, a delivery period of about two to three weeks, is requested.This delivery period is a guarantee of freshness. The products are carefully packaged in order to be airfreight. No shipment will be scheduled during the hottest months of the two hemisphères.
The partner commits itself to have respect for the products, i.e. to preserve them from any sudden variations in temperature and to stock or display them in a dry place whose ideal temperature must be around 17/18° Celsius (62/64°F).