It’s a Wrap
His truffles seduced Old Hollywood – now it’s San Clemente’s turn.
He made house-calls to Bob Hope, satisfied Katherine Hepburn’s secret craving for dark chocolate caramels and supported Frank Sinatra in his $400 a month maple cream habit: it was Hollywood in the early ‘70s, and Hermann Schmid’s Swiss chocolates had seduced Tinsel Town’s biggest names.
Four decades later and it is now San Clemente’s turn to fall under Schmid’s sweet spell – just as chocolate has hit the big-time. Once the devil of dieters everywhere, chocolate is swiftly replacing wine, cheese and balsamic vinegar in the tasting stakes. But after more than forty years making truffles, Schmid isn’t buying in to any trend.
The Del Mar storefront of Schmid’s Of San Clemente is small – a definite downsizing since his Hollywood heyday in the ‘70s. And there’s no pseudo-scientific tasting chart in sight. Instead, the European moulds and recipes he first used as a 19-year old trainee at Lindt in Switzerland take pride of place in the back workroom. Out front, temperature-controlled showcases house a tantalising selection of more than four dozen different chocolate treats: the Grand Marnier is a new addition, so too the strawberry cheesecake.
Whatever treat he’s creating, you can be sure of a sample – no on leaves the store without at least one. “I create something new every month, but many of the chocolates are from the same recipes I used in Beverly Hills,” Schmid says. “I even have people from L.A. – my old clients – coming to buy my chocolates.”
That he still has loyal followers more than thirty years after selling all six of his Edelweiss candy shops – including the Beverly Hill shop that brought him fame – goes some way to describing the potent appeal of Schmid’s chocolates. The secret, he confides, is all in the cocoa bean. Where 90 per cent of candy manufacturers use chocolate made from the lesser forastero plant, Schmid favours that which is made from criallo trees, a high grade form of cocoa grown predominantly in Mexico.
The difference is in the richer aroma and more flavourful taste. And, of course, in the price. “Charles Bronson asked me if the chocolate was made from gold because he thought my truffles were so expensive,” Schmid recalls of his Beverly Hills days. “I thought it was funny, because at the time he was one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood.”
His San Clemente customers clearly have no such reservations. The shop is busy with people of all ages: from parents buying chocolate creams for their son’s teacher, to a stressed twentysomething woman looking for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. But no matter how busy the small store gets, don’t expect an expansion. In business and in life, Schmid is a firm believer in quality, not quantity. “Chocolate is like good coffee or wine. It should be smooth and silky with no aftertaste, with a quality that you do not need more than a taste,” Schmid says. “Just one Swiss truffle is like a dessert.”
Obviously ol’ Blue Eyes didn’t agree.