Cluizel

Michel Cluizel traces to 1948 in Damville, a small town in Normandy, when Marc and Marcelle Cluizel expanded their existing pastry business into chocolate-making from the family kitchen. Their son Michel began apprenticing in the craft at age sixteen and eventually gave the house his name. For decades the company operated as a conventional French chocolatier, buying in cocoa mass and couverture like most confiseurs of its era.

The turning point came in 1997, when the house began making chocolate directly from raw cocoa beans on-site rather than from bought-in couverture - a bean-to-bar process it branded with its own coined term, "cacaofevier," which it patented to distinguish itself from chocolatiers who only melt and remold industrial chocolate. That shift pushed the company toward direct plantation sourcing: its "1er Cru de Plantation" range uses beans from single, named estates, such as Hacienda Concepcion in Venezuela, roasted and processed in-house rather than blended from multiple anonymous origins.

In 1999 the house formalized a "Noble Ingredients" policy, committing to pure cocoa butter instead of substitute vegetable fats, real Bourbon vanilla pods rather than synthetic flavoring, and whole dried fruits - ingredient choices that at the time set it apart from larger industrial chocolate makers using cheaper fat and flavor substitutes. The Damville site now also houses the Chocolatrium, a chocolate-making museum built around the original Normandy factory, tying the brand's retail and educational presence back to its founding town.