These are the first cocoa sacks that Julia had harvested from three different Wild Forest Gardens in order to start the first drying trials together with an envoy from the farming community near Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.
The family-run plantation in Guatemala has become particularly dear to us. In 2020 the cultivation area was certified organic. We will integrate the high-quality cocoa from this plantation into our products in the years to come.
We started offering homemade chocolate in 2013 – a first on the German market. We have created chocolate ourselves in numerous chocolate workshops. Many of the suggestions and recipes from this time have flowed into our fine CHOCQLATE chocolates. Many thanks to everyone who experimented and tried with us back then.
Wherever we are in the countries where cocoa originated, we teach local people how to make chocolate themselves – especially children. It's always wonderful to look into her sparkling eyes. Many of them don't even know what will become of "their" trees.
Many thanks to Christoph Kuhn, who continues to expand CHOCQLATE alongside Julia. Thanks to his family, we have access to this wonderful variety of cocoa.
Many thanks to my friend Andrea Mast. Together with us she discovered many small cocoa plantations that produce particularly high-quality cocoa. Family businesses, smallholders with a vision. On the left you can see Andrea with Orphelia in Peru.
Our chocolate story
In 2013 we went online with our do-it-yourself chocolate sets. The innovation: Anyone can become a chocolatier at home and create their very own chocolate creations. As pioneers in this field, we only sweeten our products with organic agave and organic coconut blossom sugar right from the start.
The CHOCQBAR cocoa bars followed in 2014 and cocoa beans as a snack in 2015. In 2014 we had ourselves certified organic and thus created the conditions for entry into the German, Austrian and Swiss organic specialist trade.
Of course, our ingredients came from ecologically controlled cultivation right from the start. In addition, we were one of the first manufacturers in the entire organic range to pack our products in plastic-free film made from wood cellulose. In 2016 we fulfilled our big dream: to produce a natural premium chocolate with "Virgin Cacao".
This chocolate is of course vegan, because dark chocolate or dark chocolate has more than 60 percent cocoa content and usually contains no milk powder! Due to our focus on natural and high-percentage dark chocolate, the machines remain milk and lactose-free to this day. That's why we can claim that CHOCQLATE chocolates are "pure" and "lactose-free" and "vegan chocolate" with a clear conscience.
We are proud to have established an organic chocolate range certified according to IFS-Featured standards and thus the highest food safety - produced absolutely sustainably and fairly. Our online shop currently has 17 delicious chocolates, ingredients for making chocolate yourself, snacks on offer, take a look!
Julia Brodbeck, our founder and managing director, holds the company in her own hands. As a career changer, it was a challenge to learn about the complex topic of “food” and the in many respects sensitive product “chocolate”. The vision of bringing a "good" product into the world that makes people happy has carried her through the ups and downs of the startup phase. Julia made a conscious decision to grow organically in small steps in favor of independence and quality. Today, CHOCQLATE is a premium brand among chocolates.
We grow through the organic recommendation of those who enjoy our chocolate and cocoa products. You - our customers - are the basis for us, so that we can continue to develop as a small, still craft-oriented company. We would also like to thank the chocolate and organic retailers for placing their trust in a small company like us. In addition to many owner-managed organic retail stores, nationwide chain stores such as Allnatura and regional chains such as Vollkorner, Denns and Basic have also listed us.
The CHOCQLATE team is always personally available to you. Your
Antonie Bögl – Commercial Sales
Christoph Kuhn – end customer support, online and
Process management, B2B
Julia Brodbeck - Management - Product development, production, B2B
What is special about CHOCQLATE chocolates
Natural and unrefined organic ingredients, our special "Virgin Cacao" bean, the special recipe and the art of chocolate production make our chocolate compositions so uniquely creamy and mild. Even sworn fans of milk chocolate love its consistency and fine taste.
In 2012, CHOCQLATE opened a new chapter in the world of organic cocoa products and organic chocolate with "Virgin Cacao": To our knowledge, we are the only chocolate company that produces vegan chocolate, chocolate bars and snacks from high-quality fine flavor cocoa and completely natural cocoa beans. Our "Virgin Cacao" beans are harvested directly from the tree and freshly dried, hardly fermented and processed without roasting.
We deliberately included a "Q" in the name of our chocolate CHOCQLATE. It stands for our innermost value "quality" and reminds us every day of our promise to produce the best quality.
The "Q" also and above all stands for the special quality of our "Virgin Cacao" and forms the center of our mandala logo.
The logo shows a cut cocoa pod with its five fruit chambers. We have integrated an image of Quetzalcóatl, the cocoa god of the Maya and Aztecs, into the fruit chambers. These ancient Central and South American civilizations described cocoa beans as the fruit of the gods. They knew that they give so much mental and physical strength because of their diverse nutrients and messenger substances.
At times, cocoa was therefore only reserved for priests and kings. It was also given to soldiers who had to march for days in the inhospitable regions of the Andes with the energizers and stimulants.
What makes our chocolate so creamy and mild?
Our "Virgin Cacao" beans are added "Bean-to-Bar" to the CHOCQLATE chocolates: every step of the processing of the natural cocoa beans to the finished chocolate bar is in our hands. That's why we can promise you that, in addition to our finely aromatic "Virgin Cacao", CHOCQLATE chocolates only contain fine flavor cocoa, cocoa butter and coconut blossom sugar.
They are free from refined sugar, lactose, lecithin and emulsifiers that are often used in conventional chocolate production. CHOCQLATE chocolates contain 73 percent cocoa. Despite this high cocoa content, they taste particularly creamy and mild. This is mainly due to the special quality of our "Virgin Cacao" and the complex manufacturing process. With the help of traditional rolling mills and modern ball mills, the high-quality organic ingredients are first coarsely ground and then finer and finer. The cocoa mass is then conched at a controlled temperature for around 24 hours, i.e. it is stirred and ground and creates the creamy-soft melt and reduces the natural bitter substances in the cocoa. Even sworn fans of milk chocolate love the consistency and the fine taste of our CHOCQLATE chocolates.
What is virgin cocoa?
"Virgin Cacao" is pure, completely natural cocoa in raw food quality to preserve primary and secondary plant substances. Our "Virgin Cacao" is harvested and dried on our behalf and according to a process defined by us in organic farming in Peru - it is the heart of our creamy, mild organic chocolate.
The cocoa beans with their fruity-nutty aromas are freshly harvested, dried together with the fruit skin at below 45 degrees Celsius directly on the plantation and only slightly fermented. This gentle process is strictly controlled by the cocoa farmers. Thanks to the low temperature, the valuable nutrients, vital substances and antioxidants in "raw" cocoa beans are preserved.
The unroasted "Virgin Cacao" beans are then shipped directly from the plantation to Germany and processed here into our delicious CHOCQLATE chocolates.
Why does chocolate make you happy?
You can enjoy chocolate with a high cocoa content with a clear conscience - even more: You're doing something good for yourself! Because cocoa is one of the highest quality foods in the world: a single bean of this superfood contains over 300 vital substances that make you happy and have a health-promoting effect.
Cocoa puts you in a good mood and makes you happy. The Maya knew this centuries ago and it has also been known in our culture for a long time. This applies in particular to unroasted or gently dried cocoa beans and is partly due to the high tryptophan content in the beans. This micronutrient is an important precursor of the messenger substance or "happiness hormone" serotonin, which increases our well-being and scares away tiredness and low mood.
The natives of South America used cocoa as a medicine against depression. These statements come from the 2018 book "Healthy Chocolate" by the chocolate expert Andrea Mast.
Dark chocolate has another wonderful effect on our lives: In stressful situations, it can inhibit the release of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Without the hormone release, we remain calmer and more relaxed. This is due to the particularly high proportion of flavonoids and polyphenols (antioxidants) in cocoa. These secondary plant substances, which are also found in vegetables and fruit, bind so-called free radicals, which play a role in connection with a number of lifestyle diseases.
Polyphenols and flavonoids react with the free radicals and render them harmless. Regularly snacking on dark chocolate with a cocoa content of over 70 percent has been shown to lower blood pressure, reduce the risk of heart disease, prevent vascular disease and improve memory.
"No other time has nature squeezed such a wealth of important nutrients into such a small space as in the cocoa bean."
(quote from Alexander von Humboldt)
If you want to know more about it, you can find more information here:
• Information about the Zutphen Elderly Study, 2006
• Long-term study confirms that chocolate can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, 2010
• Cacao seeds are a „Super Fruit“, 2011
• New studies show dark chocolate consumption reduces stress and inflammation, 2018
High quality raw materials and ingredients
CHOCQLATE chocolate is available as pure organic chocolate and as fruity, nutty, spicy, hot or lightly salted chocolate compositions. Like our cocoa and coconut blossom sugar, the fruits, nuts, spices and seeds come from controlled organic cultivation and are unrefined as far as possible.
For example, we use natural, freeze-dried fruit pieces for our raspberry and strawberry chocolate. They are not mixed with the chocolate, but spread on the individual chocolate bars by hand. This is the only way your palate can differentiate between the mildly sweet taste of the berries and the chocolate. We add dried oranges and their skins from Andalusia to our orange chocolate. The fruity, tart taste comes from real oranges and not from aroma oil, as is the case with conventional orange chocolate.
My Products
How does chocolate taste without refined sugar?
Our "Virgin Cacao" chocolates contain 73% cocoa and 27% sugar. Depending on the type and recipe, this corresponds to around 20 grams of sugar per bar. Since we want you to be able to enjoy our delicious chocolate carefree, we searched intensively for an alternative to refined sugar and decided early on to use coconut blossom sugar. As pioneers in this field, we have been sweetening our cocoa bars with this unrefined natural product since 2014, which causes the blood sugar level in the body to rise only slowly and has a low glycemic index.
A short time later, we started looking for the organic coconut blossom sugar, which goes perfectly with both the fruity notes of our "Virgin Cacao" and the tart flavors of our fine flavor cocoa.
We found what we were looking for in Java, Indonesia, where it is traditionally sweetened with the sap of the coconut palm. With its abundance of malty-caramel, sometimes slightly nutty-vanilla aromas, the taste of this coconut blossom sugar harmonises perfectly with the creamy, delicate melt of our CHOCQLATE and OYHA chocolates. Convince yourself!
If you are interested in how coconut blossom sugar is obtained, we recommend watching a five-minute video on Dr. goerg
With CHOCQLATE, Julia's vision became reality: Pure chocolate of a particularly high quality - the "Q" in CHOCQLATE. Organic chocolate with unrefined ingredients and sweetness. Another pioneering act on the German organic market: Since 2014 we have been packaging our chocolates without plastic or adhesives. More about this: click here!
