Our Ingredients

Exquisite chocolates come from exceptional ingredients — only natural, ethically grown, artisanally made, meticulously crafted by producers who share our commitment to excellence.

COUVERTURE

Valrhona & Felchlin

Valrhona of France and Felchlin of Switzerland are watchwords for chocolate excellence. Valrhona, processing less than 0.15% of the world’s cocoa, and Felchlin, distinguished by cocoa of equal rarity and over a century of expertise, both uphold exacting standards, sustainable practices, and close, cooperative partnerships with growers. Their exceptional couvertures provide L.A. Burdick with the rare and glorious raw material that allows us to handcraft what we believe is the finest chocolate in the world.

At Valrhona, we are proud to share a partnership of nearly four decades with L.A. Burdick, rooted in our mutual passion for exceptional chocolate and uncompromising quality.

Geoffrey Thellier

COO Americas, Valrhona

Pears on a wooden surface
Each season brings inspiration: fresh, peak-harvest ingredients like these Asian pears become part of our limited-edition chocolates and pastries.

CREAM

McNamara Dairy

Used in all of our handcrafted ganaches, cream is the velvet to chocolate’s silk, the carrier of chocolate’s nuances, and the arbiter of ganache’s texture. McNamara Dairy has supplied our cream for more than 30 years. A third-generation family-owned farm in New Hampshire, their lovingly tended herd of 220 Holstein cows produces unsurpassably lush, thick, hormone-free, stabilizer-free cream, still delivered to us in glass bottles.

Person pouring milk from a container into a pan with a blurred background

DRIED APRICOTS

B&R Farms

Plump, tart dried Blenheim apricots are our singular choice and B&R Farms’ are the finest we have tasted. An heirloom variety, they showcase delicate blushing skins, a honeysuckle aroma, and complexly flavored flesh. Due to shifts in commercial farming, urban sprawl, and the fruit’s innate delicacy, this once popular crop is now kept from extinction by a handful of passionate growers. Four generations of Rossi family have grown and harvested these superlative apricots. Sun-dried and packed on the farm, there simply isn’t a better dried apricot.

Our ingredients are as natural and simple as a grocery list — berries and cream, walnuts and honey, aromatic spices and fresh herbs — creatively transformed into the wondrous array of our 300 different chocolates and pastries.

ANN-MICHELE

CHOCOLATE-MAKING

Using fresh mint leaves, rather than mint extract, gives our chocolates a rounded, multi-layered flavor.

COFFEE

Devoción

Devoción was born from an ardent desire to produce the freshest, most delicious coffee imaginable. The team hand-selects farm partners, dry-mills in Bogotá, Colombia, flies the beans via FedEx to New York, and roasts them at peak freshness in Brooklyn. They are the only company in the world to bring coffee from origin to roasting in as little as 10 days, an extraordinary contrast to the industry norm of 6 to 12 months. One taste of Devoción espresso was all our Head Chocolatier, Michael Klug, needed to realize that it had to be the coffee in our cafés and an ingredient in our bonbons and pastries.

Each year, we squeeze and zest over 20,000 pounds of fresh citrus fruits to make our chocolates and pastries.

VANILLA BEAN

Madagascar Vanilla Bean

We hold exacting standards for these gems of nature, using only traditionally cured vanilla beans. Like cocoa, vanilla is a product of its terroir, its unique character revealed through the curing process. Our beans are dried in open air, moved judiciously from sun to shade, and massaged by hand to ensure consistent drying, each bean developing a complex flavor. Madagascar beans in particular are sweet, creamy, and floral. Mexican beans are fruity with hints of spice. Others offer dried fruit or earthy notes. Amazingly complex and versatile, it is no wonder we only use traditionally cured vanilla beans — never extracts.

Vanilla beans being sliced with a knife on a white background