Celebrating 70 years in Chocolate Making.

A journey through the chocolate making process from BEAN-TO-BAR.

In 1948 Marc and Marcelle Cluizel began making chocolates in Damville, Normandy, where their son Michel Cluizel joined to apprentice in the art of making chocolate at just sixteen years of age.

Michel Cluizel grew and modernized the chocolate making process while managing to maintain elements of the original artisan qualities and continuing the traditions of a family run business.

Marc Cluizel, son of Michel Cluizel, along with his sisters Catherine and Sylvie, maintain these traditions while continuing to grow the business.  In 2013 Marc transformed Michel Cluizel into Manufacture Cluizel to represent their strong values of maintaining chocolate processed from scratch with human intervention, not purely machine, the use of quality ingredients and continuing development of direct relationships with cacao farmers. 

Since 1997 Michel Cluizel has been making bean-to-bar chocolate (making chocolate directly from cocoa beans) that they refer to as "Cacaofeviers".

From the start, Michel Cluizel has never used soy in their products and since 1999 Cluizel has been committed to the use of "Noble Ingredients" meaning the use of ingredients such as pure cocoa butter instead of other fats, real Bourbon vanilla pod and whole dried fruits.  Marc Cluizel has banned the use of all food colors that are not 100% natural, even before European law changed to that requirement. 

Manufacture Cluizel includes "Cacaofevier", starting with cocoa beans and transforming them into completed chocolate, "Confectioner", making from-scratch fillings such as praline, caramel, etc. and "Chocolate Makers", from making, to coating, to decorating their chocolates. 

2000 began the launch of Michel Cluizel plantation chocolates, which now includes the Los Ancones Plantation, Mokaya Plantation, Vila Gracinda Plantation, Mangaro Plantation and the El Jardin Plantation.  

With artisan beginnings in Damville in 1948, opening a store in Paris on rue Saint-Honore in 1987, opening the Chocolatrium (chocolate museum) in Damville, opening a store in New York in 2009, opening a Chocolatrium in West Berlin, NJ and making chocolate that is known around the world for excellence and quality, imagine what Manufacture Cluizel will create over the next seventy years?