Bonnat has made chocolate in the same Alpine town since 1884, and invented the single-origin bar as we know it.

Félix Bonnat opened his workshop in Voiron in 1884 — the first in France dedicated to turning cacao beans into chocolate rather than buying it in. Five generations later the house is still family-run, still in Voiron, and still working in a manner that most of the industry abandoned decades ago.

The decisive moment came in 1984. For the centenary, Raymond Bonnat released the Grands Crus: eight bars, each made from beans of a single guaranteed origin, at a time when almost no one was making chocolate that way. The idea is now the organising principle of fine chocolate everywhere. It started here. Stéphane Bonnat, the fifth generation, extended it with the Grands Crus d'Exception, and spends several months of each year in Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Haiti and Cuba, selecting beans by their mucilage and supervising fermentation at source so that what arrives in Voiron tastes of what he found in the field.

What distinguishes a Bonnat bar on the palate is the cocoa butter. The house finishes generously with it, which is why these bars melt and spread rather than snapping and sitting on the tongue — a rounder, more classically French reading of a single origin than the sharper, more austere style that came out of the American craft movement. Low acidity, long finish, nothing added to obscure the bean. Cocoa, cocoa butter, sugar.

The Grands Crus are regular winners at the International Chocolate Awards. We stock a rotating selection.