A foggy day in Orvieto town.

I know, I know, the song is a Foggy day in London town, but as I start my morning ritual of cappuccino by the dining room/kitchen window, staring out over the valley that is blanketed in a thick, heavy fog, the song comes to mind.  And when I say ritual, I mean almost every morning it's been foggy.  I'm not complaining though.  Things could be much worse.

Ok, now where did I leave off?  Ah, Goat cheese, now on to Chocolate and Perugina, in Perugia.  Briefly, Perugina was founded in 1907 by Giovanni Buitoni and Luisa Spagnoli.  The product was introduced to the US during the 1939 World's Fair in New York.  The company produces a quite a few food and chocolate products.  During Easter they are known for their large chocolate eggs, wrapped in colorful aluminum paper.  But, what they are known world wide for is the Baci.  They are chocolate kisses filled with hazelnut, wrapped in a multilingual love note.  They are written in either Italian, English, French German, Greek, Spanish, or Portuguese.  Now, of course Nestle saw this and boom, Perugina is a branch of Nestle.  Fortunately no recipes were harmed and no products were sacrificed after this acquisition.  So what you taste today from Perugina is still a good quality chocolate, made on a larger scale, which I honestly thought was impossible.  And after touring the production floor, you can still see that the folks working here love their job and still are passionate about the product they turn out daily.

Walking in to Perugina, you can smell the chocolate, and the atmosphere is almost a Willy Wonka type of feel.  I wanted to lick the wall and taste the schnozzberries!  Wait, no, I wanted to taste the chocolate.  But honestly, the smell of chocolate was so in your face, it was almost like walking in a sea of chocolate.  By our first tasting, I was already full from the aroma's of the Milk and Fondante lingering in the air, but of course I didn't let that stop me.

Our first stop was a brief, I mean, really brief video of the history of Perugina.  We walked in as the video ended, so we decided that we would research on our own and get the tour started.  Perugina has a fantastic tour, if you get a chance, go.  Francesca was our tour guide and walked us through the years of Perugina.  The commercials, the ads, the various products, and various displays.  She showed us the shell of the largest baci, which was made for a chocolate festival in Perugia, and then we walked the cat walk to view the production area.

The next stop for us was the Scuola del Cioccolato with Il Maestro Massimiliano Guidubaldi.  This school hosts guests for working with chocolate on a daily basis.  It can range from anywhere from one hour to an all day affair.  Anyone can take this course, people off of the street to culinary students, and it's a worthy experience.  We did almost everything.  We melted the chocolate, making sure not to get one drop of water in it, because the melted chocolate would seize to a messy ball of mud.  We tempered the chocolate on the granite countertop and filled the professional mold with the tempered chocolate and off to the chiller to let it set.  After that, a quick cafe', to wait.  This is certainly not a clean job, so prepare to have your hands and possibly up to your shoulders covered in delicious chocolate.  We also worked on our own ganache.  I went with the pistachio cream, espresso liquer, and cream.  I mean, I don't believe a ganache tastes right without some sort of liquer.  To me it's like making Bourbon balls, without the Bourbon, and who does that?  So the ganache was a disturbing bland color, but I would not give up on this one.  We let it cool, but not too much and we filled our truffles.  Then off to cool for a short bit while we prepped the bottom layer to the truffle so it was a complete truffle.  After the cooling, the bottom layer was applied and off to cool again.  While it cooled, we prepped our station as best could be done to then wrap our goods to take away.  There was also a young lady, and I can't remember her name.  Her job is solely to clean the room and everything that is used during these classes.  I'm pretty sure she doesn't make enough money annually to deal with the disaster that awaited her this time.

Il Maestro

Throughout the clean up, she never stopped smiling.

Possibly up to the elbows in Chocolate.

We gathered our chocolates and returned to our station to remove from the mold and wrap our goods.  Now, typically this is a 25 step process, if you want your truffles to have an amazing sheen to them.  However due to time constraints, this was not going to be possible.  So we topped them with a nice drizzle of white chocolate, let it set and wrapped them as if we were to present them to the CEO of Perugina.  We then received our certificates and sadly left this chocolate wonderland.

Rocking the Honey Butter Fried Chicken shirt with Il Maestro

Everyday I wake up, I still can't believe that this is happening, and I can't thank people enough for the support, Mom, Tammy, Rocky, Mindy, Anna, Andi, Rob, Cheri, Troy, John, David, Mandi, Mandy, Brett, Retired Chief Chris, Chief Mark.  I could go on and on and would need a page just for that.  

Time to stop and get cleaned up.  A Thanksgiving dinner tonight in the countryside and then off for a get away this week.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this and continue to read and follow my adventure.  My hopes in doing this are not to brag, but to help those that can't travel, to feel the experience or those that want to travel, get some ideas on places to go and things to do.  And if you would like to see more photos, send me a message and we can connect on Facebook.

Ciao!