A Brazilian soul that has taken root in French soil. Her business began in 2013; the encounter with cocoa took place while she was looking for the material to create her Brigadero, a typical Brazilian dessert.

In 2018 she created her first bar upon returning from Brazil. While we Italians leave with a suitcase full of pasta, homemade tomato preserves, and oil, she was returning home with a suitcase full of cocoa beans.

The whole process from seed to bar is in her hands. When I mean in her hands, I mean it literally, because she describes the vitality inherent in the cocoa bean and her identity that varies, as living matter, from season to season, from harvest to harvest. Her eyes sparkle when she tells me “for me the transformation from seed to bar is pure magic.”

I ask her what are the three goals to be most proud of to date and she replies right away, without hesitation: being the mother of four wonderful children and an entrepreneur in the first place; collaborating with growers’ cooperatives in Brazil as well as with cocoa harvesters that grow instinctively in the Amazon area, secondly; and third, be part of the Bean to Bar France Association, which has given itself a regulation on the traceability of production together with an ethical orientation towards all the participants in the supply chain, be an active part in educating new generations to be aware of the consumption of chocolate in every aspect, especially the tasting one, with a quality of material respected in its essence, both from the point of view of the ethics of its production.

Certainly, the great challenges still to be overcome cannot be missing in this adventure. Following entirely and directly the process of creating your own bar involves finding the time to communicate, instruct, inform, and solve together with the growers the problems of growing and harvesting the seed; the immense problems of logistics to preserve the very delicate substance in the various steps up to the destination; cultivate in a process of personal growth while remaining in listening and respecting the raw material, which you never stop getting to know; share with those who make the reality of chocolate possible the knowledge and steps along this path, always bearing in mind that very often growers will never see the final result of this magical transformation.