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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

French Broad 100% Cacao Dark Chocolate Bar

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.

French Broad Costa Rica 80% Dark Chocolate Bar
French Broad 75% Dark Chocolate Bar with Sea Salt

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.

French Broad Guatemala 73% Dark Chocolate Bar
French Broad 72% Dark Chocolate Bar with Scorpion Pepper

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.

French Broad Peru 70% Dark Chocolate Bar
French Broad Nicaragua 68% Dark Chocolate Bar

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.

French Broad India 71% Dark Chocolate Bar
French Broad 45% Milk Chocolate Bar with Chai Masala

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.

French Broad 53% Dark Milk Chocolate Bar
French Broad 45% Brown Butter Milk Chocolate Bar

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.

French Broad Malted 45% Milk Chocolate Bar
French Broad Dark Chocolate Sipping Chocolate

Dark Chocolate Sipping Chocolate

Not “Hot Cocoa”

Not to be confused with mass-produced “hot cocoa,” French Broad’s Chocolate Sip is made with the finest direct-trade cacao, which they transform into chocolate at their little factory in the mountains of Western North Carolina. They then add a touch of organic, fair trade sugar. The end result is nothing short of intense, in the most spectacular of ways.

To make a Chocolate Sip at the Chocolate Lounge (their flagship Dessert Restaurant in Asheville), French Broad starts with their own bean-to-bar chocolate, and steam it with just enough water to be sippable. They’ve gotten so many requests that they decided to package it so that friends could make it at home (also love to take it on backpacking trips through our beautiful mountains!).

The 6oz jar has the recipe printed on the back.

Makes approximately 6 servings.

Milk Chocolate Sipping Chocolate

Available Due to Popular Demand

Not to be confused with mass-produced “hot cocoa,” French Broad’s Chocolate Sip is made with the finest direct-trade cacao, which they transform into chocolate at their little factory in the mountains of Western North Carolina. They then add a touch of organic, fair trade sugar. The end result is nothing short of intense, in the most spectacular of ways.

To make a Chocolate Sip at the Chocolate Lounge (their flagship Dessert Restaurant in Asheville), French Broad starts with their own bean-to-bar chocolate, and steam it with just enough water to be sippable. They’ve gotten so many requests that they decided to package it so that friends could make it at home (also love to take it on backpacking trips through our beautiful mountains!).

The 6oz jar has the recipe printed on the back.

Makes approximately 6 servings.

French Broad Milk Chocolate Drinking Chocolate
French Broad Chocolates Chai Masala Milk Sipping Chocolate

Chai Masala Milk Sipping Chocolate

In Collaboration with Spicewalla

Crafted with the mind-blasting Chai Masala spice blend from the fellow Asheville makers at Spicewalla, French Broad’s Chai Masala Milk Sipping Chocolate marries their creamy brown butter milk chocolate with black tea and warming spices.

Made with the finest direct-trade cacao, organic sugar, and natural ingredients, our pure, delicious sipping chocolates aren’t to be confused with mass-produced hot cocoa and are the foundation of their famous Liquid Truffle! Each 6oz jar includes recipes for hot chocolate and French Broad’s Liquid Truffle on the back.

Each jar makes approximately 6 servings.

Featured Brand:

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Fine & Curated Chocolates

A vast array of the finest culinary chocolates & couvertures produced, on top of award-winning bean to bar alike chocolate bars, pieces and gifting options. Both direct to your doorstep as well as large volume fulfillment. Please contact with questions

Fine & Curated Chocolates

We offer the largest selection of premium culinary chocolate & couverture from around the world. You’ll also find award-winning retail, bean to bar and single origin products, as well as unlimited chocolate gifting options. We ship all orders, retail or bulk, directly to your doorstep or shipping dock. Connect with WWC for all of your chocolate needs, desires and questions.

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Upon sending us a contact request, you will receive a response within 24-48 business hours from one of our team members. 

424 NH-125 #7,
Brentwood. NH, 03833

+1 (603) 942-6032 M-F 9-4 ET

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