The Ghirardelli Difference

As America's longest continuously operating chocolate manufacturer, Ghirardelli has established its position as America's premium chocolate company for more than 150 years.

We are one of very few American manufacturers that make chocolate starting from the cocoa bean through to finished products. Throughout the process, we take special steps to ensure that our premium chocolate delivers our signature intense, smooth-melting chocolate taste.

• Intensive quality assurance in the selection of cocoa beans means that Ghirardelli accepts only the highest-quality beans. We reject as many as 40% of the beans that are offered to us. Beans that are not selected are sold to other manufacturers.
• In all of its chocolate product, Ghirardelli uses a proprietary blend of cocoa beans that has been refined over the company's 150-year history to provide the company's distinct and intense chocolate taste.
• Ghirardelli roasts the cocoa beans in-house to ensure the company's signature flavor profile is consistently maintained in all chocolate products. We also use a different roasting process whereby we remove the shell first and then roast the small nibs inside. Because the nibs are fairly uniform in size, we have more control over the temperature and time, so we can get a more specific flavor. Other companies roast their beans before removing the shell, which requires over-roasting the outside portion of the bean in order to roast the inside. This could impart a burned flavor to their chocolate.
• Finally, Ghirardelli uses an intensive refining process to ensure that its chocolate truly melts in your mouth! Ghirardelli has no grainy feel because we refine most of our chocolate flakes until they are 19 microns (human hair is 100 microns in diameter). Other mass market chocolates are refined to only 40 microns.