Confiserie Florian
Confiserie Florian is a family confectioner from the French Riviera, with workshops at Pont-du-Loup in the hills behind Nice and on the old port of Nice itself. Since 1921 the house has turned the fruit and flowers of its own hinterland, bitter oranges, lemons, figs, violets, roses and jasmine, into jams, jellies, crystallized petals and candies, cooked by hand in copper. Clipperton imports its fruit and flower preserves and crystallized flowers to Canada and the United States.
The house
The Florian name first appeared in 1921, when a chocolate factory opened on the port of Nice. The painter Henri Matisse was among its regular customers. In 1935 the Fragonard perfume house, founded in Grasse in 1926 and run by Eugène Fuchs, bought a perfume factory at Pont-du-Loup, below the village of Tourrettes-sur-Loup; in 1949 that site became a confectionery, the Confiserie des Gorges du Loup, run by his son Georges. The copper cauldrons and terracotta vessels came from the celebrated Confiserie Nègre, whose equipment Georges Fuchs had acquired.
When the family businesses were separated in 1996, the Fuchs family kept the confectionery and brought back the Florian name. It is now run by Frédéric and Sandrine Fuchs, the fourth generation, and both workshops still welcome visitors who want to watch the confectioners at work. Shops followed in Gourdon in 2014 and Grasse in 2016, and an artisanal biscuit bakery was added in 2022.
What sets Florian apart is how close its ingredients grow. The violets come from Tourrettes-sur-Loup, the village that made its name on the flower, where grower Marcel Quentin has supplied the house for some thirty years. Bitter oranges are picked each February in the Gairaut district of Nice on land the Fatou family has farmed since 1840. Lemons of the four-seasons variety come from an organic orchard in Saint-Laurent-du-Var, and roses and Boule d'Or figs from the Giuge family in Vence, a partnership three generations old.
What they make
The jams start with Riviera citrus: the signature Bitter Orange Jam from Nice oranges, a Lemon Jam, a Mandarin Jam and a mixed Citrus Jam, plus a Fig Jam made from Vence figs.
The flower jellies are the house's most distinctive line. The Rose Petals Jelly is delicately floral, the Violet Jelly carries the flower of Tourrettes-sur-Loup, and the Jasmine Jelly nods to the perfume flower of Grasse. They belong on a scone or a brioche, but also with fresh goat cheese.
Then come the confections: Crystallized Violet Petals, crystallized rose petals and crystallized verbena leaves, each a real petal or leaf coated in sugar, meant for decorating cakes, desserts and cocktails; and the classic Berlingots candies. Everything is in the Confiserie Florian collection.
Why Clipperton chose them
Clipperton is a family importer, and we look for houses where the people making the product are the same family that started it. Florian is a century-old confectioner still run by its founding family, still cooking in copper, and still buying its violets and oranges from named growers a few kilometers from the workshop. Those flower jellies and crystallized petals are also things we could not source from anyone else. We wrote about the house alongside our other jam makers in our Journal piece on French artisan jams.
