What is Zotter all about?

zotter chocolate

Variety, quality, innovation, originality, and sustainability are what we prioritize.

BEAN-TO-BAR + FAIR TRADE + 100% ORGANIC

zotter chocolate

Zotter is considered one of the world’s top chocolatiers. “Zotter is and will remain at the top of the world’s best chocolate producers and by far the most innovative chocolatier of all,” says the company.

A WIDE VARIETY OF 500 FLAVORS; CREATIVITY

Chocolate has been reinvented by Josef Zotter: In essence, hand-scooped chocolates are enormous bonbons. Hand-scooped Chocolates are famous for their amazing flavor combinations and unique, artistic sleeve decorations. They are multi-layered filled chocolate miracles that are manually brushed onto long lanes, one on top of the other. All of Zotter’s flavor combinations, whether they are traditional like “ButterCaramel” and “Amarena cherry” or unusual like “Whisky & Bacon” and “Hemp Bonbon,” offer a distinctive culinary experience. The many flavors of hand-scooped chocolates, all created by Josef and his daughter Julia Zotter, are available.

Since the outset, our close friend and artist Andreas H. Gratze has produced a variety of distinctive sleeve designs that transform each chocolate into a one-of-a-kind work of art and the ideal present.

Around 500 different flavors are produced by Zotter in total, including the renowned Hand-scooped Chocolates, pure single origin chocolates, drinking chocolates, pralines, couvertures, and organic handcrafted bonbons. Customers can design their own unique chocolates at our mixing bar by selecting their favorite fillings, shapes, and ingredients. All of our chocolates are bean-to-bar, fair trade, and organic.

Chocolate Bean – to – Bar

We are one of the very few “bean-to-bar” producers in Europe because we produce everything entirely in-house in Austria. To show off the fascinating world of cacao, the roasting, milling, and conching are done in tiny batches and customized for each cacao bean. In order to find the most exquisite and uncommon cacao kinds, we frequently travel to our cacao-growing regions. Similar to wine, each cacao variety has a highly distinct flavor that is influenced by the terroir of the area where it is grown. It can have a nutty flavor at times, or it can have more floral notes, like in the case of Ecuadorian beans, or citrus notes, like in the case of Madagascar beans. All of our chocolates only have the best raw ingredients.

Instead of using regular bulk chocolate, we employ fine flavor cacao bean varietals. We also use fresh cane sugar, milk from alpine farms, and genuine Bourbon vanilla, the second most costly spice in the world after saffron. Around 200 employees are employed in Austria, where daily fresh chocolate production and other tasks for our workshop are handled.

zotter chocolate

Check out our collection of  Zotter Chocolate Bars in our webshop!

zotter chocolate

Small-scale, mixed-crop farms that grow fair-trade organic cocoa beans offer better-tasting products while also preserving local human and plant cultures.

100% Organic* & Fair Trade

We’ve had our complete operation Fair Trade verified. We are a part of the World Fair Trade Organization, which serves as the governing body for fair trade worldwide. The WFTO monitors companies’ adherence to the 10 fair trade principles, which include, among other things, transparency, environmental stewardship, the payment of fair pricing, and the avoidance of child labor. We purchase our cacao directly from the growers and are willing to pay significantly more than the market price for a product of this caliber. Collaboration and human contact play a significant role in generating that remarkable quality. Recently, Julia Zotter traveled to Belize and Guatemala to see our Maya cocoa farmers. She then spent time in Peru, home to many of our cocoa suppliers.

Our primary source of cocoa, which originated in Latin America, is there. Our fine-flavor cacao comes from a variety of nations, including Madagascar, Togo, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Brazil, Belize, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Panama, Ecuador, and Guatemala. Each bar of chocolate contains a piece of history, from the Maya cacao from Belize to the cacao from Panama and Peru that was grown by native tribes in the middle of the rain forest and used to preserve their way of life, to the cacao from Nicaragua that was shipped by sailboat and arrived at Hamburg port for the first time in 20 years with our cacao on board. The Brigantes and Timbercoast employees delivered it fully without any emissions and sustainably.

One of Austria’s Most Sustainable Companies

Because they are just healthier for both the environment and us as humans, we only utilize raw materials that are organic and fairly traded. We also have a fleet of electric vehicles, a photovoltaic generator we use to generate our own power, and we run our company entirely on sustainable energy. We obtain many of the components for the free organic lunch provided to our 200 staff from our 80 hectare organic farm. In addition to planting trees in rainforests and creating various development aid initiatives like in South America, we also won the European Business Award for Sustainability in Austria. Our chocolate factory is one of Austria’s greenest companies, and we’ve alsogained an EMAS Certificate: external environmental experts assessed our production life cycle and our environmental goals and found them exemplary.

Family Business

The factory, founded long ago in one of the stables at Josef Zotter’s parents’ farm, has become a competency center for chocolate. The whole family is working there with passion, Josef, Ulrike and their children Julia and Michael, apart from Valerie, because she is still in school.

The U.S. Importer and Distributor

Barbara and Andreas Dolleschal immigrated the United States in January 2013 with a Greencard to pursue their dream to live and work here. They own Web-Development and Digital Marketing business supplying services for Zotter since early 2000’s. One can imagine working together over long time created bonds of friendship as well as deep love for chocolate itself – it wasn’t surprising they really missed Zotter Chocolate after short while when started thinking about starting 2nd company that would import & distribute Zotter Chocolates

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