French Broad Chocolate
Luxury Bean-to-Bar Chocolate
In 2012, Dan and Jael’s dream of becoming bean-to-bar chocolate makers was realized, and they opened French Broad Chocolate Factory & Tasting Room. Intent on nurturing connections to the source, French Broad Chocolate began sourcing cacao from trusted farmers and transforming it into fine chocolate, which continues to this day. The flavors of cacao, paired with ingredients thoughtfully selected for their integrity, provide inspiration for a compendium of confections and desserts, which are humbly served to our patrons in Asheville and beyond.
But the tiny chocolate empire continues to expand! In 2018, the factory on Buxton was moved to the Ramp Studios near UNC Asheville – offering 14,000 square feet of space and the ability to churn out nearly 50 tons of chocolate each year! The now vacant factory on Buxton is in the process of being transformed into French Broad Chocolates’ very own creamery – a dedicated spot to building, experimenting, and serving locally-sourced and inspired ice cream.
Shop All French Broad Chocolate
100% Cacao Dark Chocolate Bar
Bold & Intense
This bar is not for everybody. But it is for folks like you and us. We relish the opportunity to taste the unadulterated purity of 100 percent cacao chocolate. With no sweet embellishment, the seed and the maker can both show their true colors.
This is a bar of great intent: a blend of cacao origins French Broad’s chocolate makers individually roast and refine, before blending them to taste in the conche. Though
no sugar is added, the bright acidity manifests as natural sweetness. This blend surprises tasters with its harmonious balance of flavors.
Just one square of this potent chocolate captures the intensity of a freshly pulled espresso shot. Bold and intensely dark cocoa flavors are balanced with complex and wild fruit flavors of grape and lime.
Costa Rica 80% Dark Chocolate Bar
True to Their Roots
No chocolate connects French Broad more deeply with their roots than this bar. Dan & Jael lived in the cacao-rich jungles of Costa Rica for two years, where they opened a small café, called Bread & Chocolate.
Daniel South was brought on as a dishwasher, eventually being trained as Head Baker. Now Daniel has returned to his agricultural roots as a cacao processor, cultivating cacao on his farm and buying the seeds from his neighbors. He ferments the beans in wooden boxes made from trees fallen on his land, and exports cacao directly to French Broad Chocolates. Building a viable cacao business hasn’t been easy for Daniel, but we are seeing his efforts bear fruit.
This two-ingredient chocolate contains a robust eighty percent cacao with an earthy aroma. The flavor profile begins with chocolate wafer cookie and transforms into tart raspberry.
75% Dark Chocolate Bar with Sea Salt
A Timeless Classic Combination
Salt affects flavor in curious ways, thanks to the tricky flavor receptors in our brain. It subdues some flavors, and enhances others. Paired with the right cacao, salt can be another tool for manipulating the flavor of the chocolate we create!
Their friends at Bulls Bay Saltworks collect water from Bulls Bay, SC, in the protected Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, home to one of the healthiest saltwater ecosystems on the east coast. This pristine site produces a unique salt with natural purity and a distinctive flavor.
This chocolate contains seventy five percent cacao and is sprinkled with flake salt. The salt brings out the jammy fruit notes in the profile, which combine with the flavor of peanut butter.
Guatemala 73% Dark Chocolate Bar
From the Village of Rocjá Pomtilá
Deep in the foothills of northern Guatemala lies the village of Rocjá Pomtilá, a settlement of Maya Q’eqchi’ who cultivate cacao, cardamom, and maize. Their cacao has only recently become commercially available, thanks to the efforts of a truly extraordinary organization, Uncommon Cacao. The audacious proposition of Uncommon Cacao is that with education, organization and fair treatment, the cacao farmers can substantially improve their livelihoods. Their mission is to create a sustainable, prosperous cacao industry in which farmers and chocolate makers thrive together.
This bar contains 73 percent cacao and offers flavors of concord grape, fresh-baked brownies, and almond butter.
72% Dark Chocolate Bar with Scorpion Pepper
A Judicious Treat
“Peppers and chocolate make a good pair,” says grower and pepper enthusiast, Bobby of Jah Works Farm in Asheville. Both possess euphoric qualities, boost energy, and lend themselves to tasting with discernment: relishing the layers of flavors that reveal themselves slowly, and differ slightly on everyone’s tongue. Scorpion peppers are among the most piquant in the world, with more than 1.2 million Scoville heat units. Aside from the heat, The Scorpion offers a tender fruit flavor, which makes it the perfect pepper to pair with a fruit-forward cacao blend.
This chocolate isn’t a badge-of-honor experience meant to burn you from the inside out; our use of The Scorpion is judicious. We taste the fruit notes of both the pepper and the cacao.
Peru 70% Dark Chocolate Bar
With Support from Conservation Cacao
CAC Pangoa, a large cooperative with over 700 farmer members, is at a crossroads. Most of their cacao production is undifferentiated “commodity cacao.” But under the leadership of Esperanza Dionisio Castillo, with support from an organization called Conservation Cacao, the members are being encouraged and trained to devote a portion of their production to fine flavor varietals with more attention given to the quality of harvest and fermentation. Conservation Cacao’s mission is to save the rainforest through sustainable cacao. The chocolate you are about to taste brings this effort to fruition.
This two-ingredient single-origin chocolate contains seventy percent cacao and has a cinnamon bark aroma. The flavor profile is tart cherry and lemon, over a creamy cocoa base.
Nicaragua 68% Dark Chocolate Bar
Crafted with Precision
On February 29, 2012, two cacao enthusiasts founded Cacao Bisiesto; hence the name (Bisiesto is Spanish for ‘leap year’). Giff, an ex-Peace Corps expatriate, and Jose Enrique, a Nicaraguan cacao agronomist, live in the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua, where Criollo and Trinitario cacao varietals have been cultivated for generations. Both brought years of professional experience and a shared vision to their partnership. To preserve heirloom varietals of cacao, they pay a premium to local farmers for Criollo-infused seed with fine flavor profiles, and plant rare varietals on their own farms. Then they ferment and dry with precision.
The 68% dark chocolate made with this exceptional cacao has won us recognition in the Good Food Awards and at the esteemed Northwest Chocolate Festival. It has an earthy quality and offers flavors of black coffee and licorice.
India 71% Dark Chocolate Bar
Unique Indian Cacao
French Broad is pleased to offer a single-origin bar from this top-shelf Indian cacao. In this bright and clean 71% dark chocolate, you will pick up notes of sweet strawberries, tart cherries, and hibiscus tea.
45% Milk Chocolate Bar with Chai Masala
In Collaboration with Spicewalla
From India, With Love
French Broad loves to collaborate with fellow makers in Asheville, like the folks at Spicewalla, who import vibrant spices and blend them in the same maker space as their chocolate factory. Spicewalla is the latest brainchild of Meherwan Irani, whose Indian street food concept, Chai Pani, benefits from these mindblasting spices.
Serendipitously, French Broad just imported a limited quantity of very special cacao from India. With floral and tannic flavors, this cacao is a perfect vehicle for Spicewalla’s signature Chai Masala. The marriage of warming chai spices and fragrant cacao has us dreaming of a cup of steaming chai sipped on a street corner a world away.
53% Dark Milk Chocolate Bar
The Best of Both Worlds
Until recently, dark chocolate and milk chocolate did not really hang out in the same cliques. Chocolate connoisseurs turned their noses up at the candy-like approach to most milk chocolates, while those with a sweet tooth found dark chocolate too bitter to enjoy. Enter Dark Milk Chocolate: these high-cacao mass milk chocolates (generally around or greater than 50% cacao) possess the richness and complexity of dark chocolate, but are milder, smoother and creamier thanks to the addition of organic milk powder. Dark Milks are here to unite these two disparate worlds.
In our version of dark milk chocolate, we use 53% cacao and organic browned butter. Deep fudgy flavor is layered over subtle banana to create a profile that resembles a rich chocolate banana pudding.
Brown Butter 45% Milk Chocolate Bar
Milk + Chocolate
We have fond memories of eating chocolate as kids: Eating s’mores around the campfire; sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows after sledding on a Snowy Day; sorting Halloween candy with our friends after trick-or-treating. All of these nostalgic experiences revolved around a dear flavor to us: classic milk chocolate.
With French Broad’s Milk Chocolate, their intent is to recreate this iconic flavor, and elevate it with superb ingredients and expert attention to detail. They feature a much higher cacao percentage compared to the milk chocolates of our childhood (think 43% instead of 11%), with organic milk powder and browned butter.
Their Milk + Chocolate 43% bar took a Silver medal in the Americas category of the prestigious International Chocolate Awards!
This chocolate is a smooth & creamy, not-to-sweet, grown-up version of a childhood favorite. We taste caramel, cream, and yes, hot cocoa with marshmallows.
44% Malted Milk Chocolate Bar
“A Homage to Beer City”
Asheville has won national attention for its thriving craft beer scene, boasting morebreweries per capita than almost any other U.S. city. Rising up to support this industry is a new kind of malt house, one that provides locally-farmed, artisan malts that bring depth and character to beers. French Broad is honored to collaborate with this innovative business, Riverbend Malthouse, to bring you their Malted Milk Chocolate: a milk chocolate featuring Heritage barley malts, locally milled by community grain miller, Carolina Ground. To create this chocolate, F.B. toasts malted barley, and grinds it with their cacao and organic milk powder.
It holds the honor of being the reigning favorite in our bean-to-bar lineup among the residents of Asheville as well as international judges, bringing home in 2016 both a silver medal in the Americas category of the International Chocolate Awards and a finalist ribbon in Garden & Gun’s Made In The South Awards.
This chocolate has a creamy, malty flavor, with aroma of nutmeg and cinnamon. It might bring you back to your youth, when ‘malt’ meant a light, chocolatey milkshake.
Dark Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans
French Broad Chocolate starts with espresso beans from their friends at Methodical Coffee then cover them in layers of our bean-to-bar dark chocolate. Poppable, delicious, and perfect for keeping as an epic desk snack.
Dark Chocolate Covered Caramelized Almonds
French Broad Chocolate starts with farm-direct almonds and coat them in layers of their bean-to-bar dark chocolate. They’re perfect for nibbling on road trips and hikes and giving as gifts.
Milk Chocolate Covered Caramelized Hazelnuts
French Broad Chocolate starts with farm-direct, organic hazelnuts and coat them in layers of their bean-to-bar milk chocolate. They’re perfect for nibbling on road trips and hikes and make the wonderful gifts for friends, family, and yourself!
The Caramelized Hazelnuts in Milk Chocolate took a Silver medal in the Americas category of the prestigious International Chocolate Awards!
Classic Dark Hot Chocolate Mix
The Classic Hot Chocolate features chocolate that French Broad Chocolates crafts from directly sourced cacao, combined with organic cacao powder and organic powdered sugar. The resulting dark hot chocolate is an updated version of a classic – rich, thick, and deeply chocolatey. Intensely satisfying prepared with whole milk, and equally delicious with plant based milks.
Vanilla Bean Dark Hot Chocolate Mix
This hot chocolate features premium vanilla beans direct sourced from Semuliki Forest, located in Bundibugyo, Uganda. Latitude Trade Co., the company that processes and exports this vanilla, is a registered B Corporation, like French Broad Chocolate. Not only do they source vanilla from this sustainable business, but also cacao!
Cinnamon Dark Hot Chocolate Mix
French Broad Chocolate sources their cinnamon from their friends at Burlap & Barrel, who source single-origin, beautiful spices directly from artisan farms around the world. Their Royal Cinnamon is an heirloom variety, and exemplifies the intense sweetness and spiciness for which Vietnamese cinnamon is prized.
