Comptoir du Cacao: A Family Chocolate Maker in the Gâtinais

The bars from Comptoir du Cacao come in clear wrappers, so you see exactly what you are getting: thick slabs of dark, milk, blond or Ruby chocolate studded with caramelized nuts, fruit and cookie pieces. They are made with pure cocoa butter, without artificial flavorings or preservatives, in a family workshop in Bazoches-sur-le-Betz, a village in the Gâtinais, the farming country south of Paris.

From the kitchen table

Françoise and Jean-François Desmartins began making chocolate at the Domaine de l’Anche in the mid-1990s and set the company up in 2001; their son Benjamin Desmartins now runs it. Production and packing still happen in Bazoches-sur-le-Betz, where around thirty people work, forty-five in high season, including a team of five chocolatiers.

Simple rules

Chocolate is made with pure cocoa butter only, and the house sources the great majority of its other ingredients, nuts, fruit, butter and sugar, from France. It is certified under the Cocoa Horizons program, and its cardboard packaging carries the FSC label. The catalog runs to some two hundred products built on 78 chocolate recipes, and the work has been recognized at the Salon du Chocolat in Paris, at the Great Taste awards in London and at the International Chocolate Awards.

Four chocolates

We carry the gourmet bars in four chocolates: 72 percent dark, 36 percent milk, caramelized blond and naturally pink Ruby. The Almonds Blond Chocolate Bar caramelizes white chocolate to the color of honey and studs it with crunchy almonds. The Wild Blueberry Ruby Chocolate Bar pairs Ruby chocolate, pink with no coloring added, with wild blueberries. Among the classics, the Caramelized Hazelnuts bar sets whole hazelnuts in 72 percent dark chocolate, and the Guérande Sea Salt bar finishes it with hand-harvested Breton salt.

How we enjoy them

• A square of the blond almond bar with fresh apricots or peaches, or a glass of sweet white wine.
• The Ruby blueberry bar with a green or white tea, or chopped over a panna cotta.
• A bar on the table after dinner, broken into pieces for everyone.

Read the full story on our Comptoir du Cacao page, see the Comptoir du Cacao collection, and for the bigger picture, our guide to French and American chocolate.