Valrhona is a French premium
chocolate
Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cacao seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cacao has been consumed in some form since at least the Olmec civil ...
manufacturer based in the small town of
Tain-l'Hermitage in
Hermitage, a wine-growing district near
Lyon
Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of ...
.
It is now a subsidiary of
Savencia Fromage & Dairy.
The company was founded in 1922
by a French pastry chef,
Albéric Guironnet, from the
Rhône
The Rhône ( , ; wae, Rotten ; frp, Rôno ; oc, Ròse ) is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and southeastern France before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. At Ar ...
valley and has five subsidiaries and 60 local distributors across the globe. It is one of the leading producers of gastronomic chocolate in the world.
The company also maintains the ''École du Grand Chocolat'', a school for professional chefs with a focus on chocolate-based dishes and pastries.
In 2015 Valrhona opened the ''École Valrhona Brooklyn'', a pastry school in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...
;
there are also two ''Écoles Valrhona'' in France and one in Japan.
Valrhona focuses mainly on high-grade luxury chocolate marketed for commercial use by chefs as well as for private consumption.
The product line includes chocolate confectionery, plain and flavored chocolate bars and bulk chocolate in bars or pellets. Valrhona produces vintage chocolate made from beans of a single year's harvest from a specific plantation, primarily the Grand Crus
['']National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society (NGS), headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational organizations in the world.
Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, ...
''
"The 10 best chocolatiers in the World"
by Nathaniel Lande and Andrew Lande. 28 December 2012. which is grown in
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the souther ...
,
Oceania
Oceania (, , ) is a region, geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern Hemisphere, Eastern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of ...
and the
Caribbean. The company has been
B Corp–certified since January 2020.
See also
*
List of bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturers
A bean-to-bar company produces chocolate by processing cocoa beans into a product in-house, rather than merely melting chocolate from another manufacturer. Some are large companies that own the entire process for economic reasons; others are small ...
References
External links
* {{Official website, http://www.valrhona-chocolate.com/
French chocolate companies
Food and drink companies established in 1922
French brands
French companies established in 1922
Certified B Corporations in the Food & Beverage Industry