Started in 1922 in the Rhone Valley region of France, Valrhona has remained a chef driven company that values working in partnership with culinary professionals.
Valrhona employs 20 corporate chefs and operates three premier pastry schools (“Ecoles du Grand Chocolat”) throughout the world. Under the direction of Chef Frederic Bau, these centers have become unequaled spaces for chefs to learn, exchange ideas, and master their craft.
The brand of choice for the world’s most demanding pastry professionals and chocolatiers, Valrhona is committed to the creation of unique artisan quality chocolates with complex and balanced flavors. Its tradition of creativity, expertise in taste, and a strict adherence to traditional chocolate-making methods make it the standard bearer in the industry.
The pillars of Valrhona’s philosophy are the uncompromising commitment to quality, taste, innovation as well as community, environmental stewardship and sustainable business practices.
As an owner of 2 plantations, Valrhona is literally the source of fine chocolate as they plant, discover, select, and blend fine and rare cocoa beans.
In 2010, Valrhona partnered with the Merida Botanical Gardens in Venezuela on the Cambios Project to promote biodiversity preservation in the forests of the Andes Cordillera region by actively supporting a more socially and economically sustainable method of cacao farming. Under the direction of the botanical garden scientist’s, Valrhona’s El Pedregal plantation is now the pilot plantation for sustainable cacao farming and a satellite garden for the university, which oversees the botanical garden’s program.
This small manufacturer is in a small town in the Rhone valley – wine country! A symbiotic relationship where both look to the “grands crus” for their premium products.