Find out how the best tea-infused chocolate in the world is made!
When you think of a classic Advent calendar, you probably think of little chocolate figurines. Our Tea for Tomorrow Advent calendar also contains eight tea-infused chocolates as well as unique teas.
But not all chocolate is created equal! So, what sets our products apart from the usual chocolate Advent calendar?
We wanted to create nothing less than the best tea-infused chocolate in the world. To do this, we selected eight of our most popular teas, which we combined with the best chocolates in the world from our partner Original Beans using a new process developed by master chocolatier Kevin Kugel. You’ll discover all the varieties in this calendar! Read on to find out what makes these chocolates so special.
Less is more
What actually defines chocolate? Most lists of ingredients are endless: cocoa blends, lecithins, vanilla, cocoa butter of unknown origin and industrial milk... But the best chocolate doesn't need so many ingredients, it needs the right ones. That's why Original Beans chocolates contain only four ingredients: organic cocoa beans, organic cocoa butter, Swiss Alpine milk produced with animal-friendly practices, and fair-trade cane sugar.
To fully appreciate the difference, we recommend letting the chocolate melt slowly on your tongue instead of chewing it. The high-quality cocoa butter melts slowly at body temperature, allowing the complex flavors to develop over time.
How does the tea get into the chocolate?
One of the biggest challenges in creating this chocolate was balancing the flavors. How do we combine tea and chocolate without one dominating the other?
The solution is an innovative process: the tea is brewed, extracted into a liquid, and then the chocolate itself acts as the flavor carrier. This is how cocoa butter tea was born! Although the technique is a little more complex, it ensures that tea and chocolate complement each other perfectly without one drowning out the other.
A master of his craft: Kevin Kugel
Behind the perfect balance of tea and chocolate is a true professional: Kevin Kugel, a passionate chocolatier. He is not only a trained chef, master pastry chef, and business economist, but above all a true artist when it comes to chocolate. We developed the process for producing the cocoa butter tea together with him.
Few people know chocolate as well as he does: in 2013, he became German Chocolatier Champion. In 2014, he fulfilled his dream of opening his own chocolate factory and has been creating true masterpieces ever since.
But of course, a final product is always the sum of its parts. For the best chocolate, it is not enough to have the best tea and the best process; you also need the best raw materials. And this is where our partner Original Beans comes in.
Responsibility as a corporate purpose: Original Beans
- A plus for the climate: Original Beans is a climate-positive company, meaning they remove more CO₂ from the atmosphere than their production creates - an impressive 15,221 tons in 2023 alone!
- Beyond fair: Original Beans sets its own standards. The products do not carry a Fairtrade label because the criteria were not strict enough for the company. Instead, Original Beans sets its own standards and sources its beans directly from producers who are not only among the best, but also among the best-paid in the world. This is because Original Beans pays a multiple of the usual prices and builds long-term, trusting partnerships that create the basis for sustainable cocoa cultivation.
- Tree by tree, bar by bar: Original Beans has committed to planting a tree in the cocoa's region of origin for every bar of chocolate sold - not in monocultures, but in the midst of the diverse, species-rich environment. This protects the ecosystem and thus the habitat of rare animal and plant species.
- A diverse mix: All beans come from cocoa trees that are not grown in monocultures, but in the middle of the rainforest, giving farmers an incentive to preserve these precious forests.
The journey to the origin of your chocolate
Did you know that not all cocoa is the same? As with most plants, there are very different types that produce very different flavor profiles. Original Beans produces single-origin chocolates, allowing you to explore the distinct flavors of different cacao beans and taste how their origins shape their character. For our chocolates, we used beans from three regions:
- The white chocolates in our Advent calendar contain noble rinitario cocoa butter from organic cocoa gardens in the golden valley of the Río Yuna in the Dominican Republic. Refined with creamy Swiss Alpine milk, this chocolate offers a luxurious tropical escape.
- The Arriba cocoa bean grows in the province of Esmeraldas in Ecuador. Here, the Mache Chindul cloud forest stretches along the Pacific coast. “Esmeraldas” is Spanish for emeralds, and the name says it all - the region is a real paradise for hundreds of rare animal and plant species! Among others, the Imbabura tree frog, the Mache glass frog and the brown-headed sloth live here. Chocolate cultivation protects the valuable ecosystem and irreplaceable biodiversity.
- Some of the chocolates are made from Amelonado cocoa. This is grown in Africa's oldest national park, the Virunga National Park, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Long periods of exploitation and armed conflict have made the region one of the poorest in the world, but there is hope: the “Femmes de Virunga” project supported by Original Beans helps women to improve their social and economic position – for example through literacy courses, management and entrepreneurial training and an interactive radio.
Feeling inspired to try our chocolates before Advent begins? You can also buy all varieties individually!
