Leone’s Chocolate Factory is a place where the sound of the machinery at work prevails, where the aroma of the toasting cocoa beans suffuses the air, where the conches beating the chocolate with rollers and porphyry stone surfaces can be heard.

It has taken years of time and commitment searching throughout Europe in order to recover Torino’s 19th Century chocolate-making machinery. Finally this machinery has been brought back to life, producing bars, creams and gianduiotti, just as they did one hundred years ago.
 

Guido Monero, one of the most widely acclaimed experts in the Piedmontese chocolate making tradition, wanted to make his dream come true: to produce a chocolate that best expressed the personality of its creator. A far cry from the modern manufacturing logic, in which often for convenience’s sake the starting point is the mass of pre-processed cocoa, in Leone’s Chocolate Factory production techniques require time and patience, harking back to the pace of times gone-by: production begins right from the raw ingredients themselves, the cocoa beans, which are selected from amongst the finest varieties and are then roasted as the tradition has it. This is why Leone can make chocolate like very few others today, full of that special aroma that only a good roasting can give.

Leone brand roasting
After a careful selection of the cocoa beans comes one of the most special moments in the production process: the Leone brand roasting, carried out at a low temperature in order to conserve the cocoa’s aromas. The first step to an excellent chocolate lies in the roasting process, giving the chocolate an individual character, essential in distinguishing it from others.

Then to the conche, for another 60 hours of kneading
What a joy to hear the sound of the old conches of Torino, "patchick and patchack": the music of the chocolate which is carefully kneaded for over 60 hours in a conche, worked as in past times using porphyry stone, patiently,in order to best conserve the precious characteristics of the cocoa.

Ex begins with fresh milk
Leone brand milk chocolate is made from high quality fresh milk, with no use of powdered milk. In this way the flavour and the characteristics of the milk give the chocolate a full and fresh taste, which is really unique.

Constant quality
In Leone’s chocolate all the other ingredients are also of the highest quality: from the brown sugar to the vanilla in pods, from the Piedmontese P.G.I. hazelnuts to the Bronte green pistachios…

1. Harvesting
The ripe fruits are hand-picked one by one, carefully collected and immediately cut in two halves by a machete knife.

2. Fermentation
Freed from the external pod but still retaining their whitish sheaths, seeds are picked and covered by banana leaves to undergo the fermentation process, ranging from 1 to 7 days according to the given cocoa varieties. This operational phase, dramatically reducing their intrinsic bitterness and astringency, is a crucial but delicate stage because it is thanks to fermentation that cocoa aromas and flavours will develop.

3. Dessication
Cleaned from the surface mucilage, seeds are spread in the sunlight so that they can almost completely dehydrate thus changing their colour into that characteristic shade of brown we are all familiar with.

4. Shipping and storage
Once dried-up, seeds are packed in jute bags and sent to the various manufacturing places. The warehousing, also called storage, contributes to enhance the quality of future chocolate, as cocoa beans easily absorb odours. This is why these sacks are periodically checked and monitored.

1. Selection
Only the best cocoa beans are chosen and sourced from the finest cocoa varieties in the whole world.

2. Home-roasting
Like very few others in Italy, we directly roast cocoa beans. In the roaster, they are exposed to hot air, rather than flames, to preserve them from the risk of getting burnt.

3. Grinding and mixing
Roasted seeds are unpeeled and afterwards grinded. The thus achieved cocoa nib is mixed to other ingredients in a stone-rolled blender. We have willingly chosen not to rely upon a metal-sphere mill but rather upon porphyry stones so as not to excessively stress the product.

4. Refining
Essential operation aiming at removing possible solid and granular residuals. Raw chocolate slips through various rollers (three and five) which sensibly reduce its hard components, thus achieving a homogenous finesses.

5. Conching
Chocolate is cradled back and forth for at least sixty hours in porphyry flat conches making it soft and velvety. Damping, heath, breath and time eliminate acidity and tannins, without any dispersion of its aromatic component.

6. Moulding and shaping
At the final stage of its production processes, chocolate is ready to be poured into the moulds. Once cooled down, bars will be removed from the moulds and packed.