Bonnat Chocolat

Founded: 1884
Home: Voiron, France
Current Maître-Chocolatier: Stéphane Bonnat
Speciality: Single-origin Grands Crus
Known for: Cacao terroir and traditional French chocolate making
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More Than 140 Years of Chocolate Making in Voiron

A Family Tradition Since 1884

In the French town of Voiron, Maison Bonnat has built a chocolate tradition spanning more than 140 years. The company’s chocolate workshop was established in 1884 by Félix Bonnat, although the family’s involvement in confectionery and related trades stretches considerably further back.

Félix began transforming cacao beans into chocolate in Voiron, selecting and roasting the beans himself. By the end of the 1880s, one of the house’s early successes was the Pavés de Voiron, small cube-shaped chocolates that were eventually distributed throughout France and later exported abroad.

That combination of tradition and curiosity has remained central to Maison Bonnat through successive generations.

Helping Pioneer Single-Origin Chocolate

One of Bonnat’s most important contributions came a century after the chocolate workshop opened.

In 1983, Raymond Bonnat developed the house’s first Grands Crus — chocolate bars made exclusively from cacao beans from a single origin. Created for the chocolaterie’s centenary period, the collection initially showcased eight origins and helped demonstrate how cacao from different growing regions could produce distinctly different chocolate.

Today, the Grands Crus remain fundamental to Bonnat’s identity. The collection explores cacao from regions including Ecuador, Madagascar, Venezuela, Peru and Brazil, allowing differences in origin and terroir to become part of the tasting experience.

For modern chocolate enthusiasts accustomed to seeing origin prominently displayed on packaging, this approach may seem familiar. During the 1980s, however, deliberately presenting individual cacao origins in this way was a significant departure from the widespread practice of blending beans from multiple regions.

Stéphane Bonnat and the Search for Cacao

Today, Stéphane Bonnat continues the family’s chocolate-making tradition.

His involvement reaches well beyond the laboratory in Voiron. According to Maison Bonnat, he spends several months each year travelling through cacao-growing regions, working with farmers and searching for distinctive varieties. His travels have taken him throughout Latin America as well as to cacao-producing regions in Africa and Asia.

This close relationship with cacao growers reflects Bonnat’s philosophy that chocolate making begins at origin. Fermentation, cultivation and bean selection can be as important to the final flavour as roasting, grinding and conching in France.

The house has also worked to preserve or revive unusual cacao. Its Grand Cru collection includes chocolates produced from rare beans and individual growing communities, giving consumers an opportunity to explore the extraordinary diversity within cacao itself.

Heritage That Continues to Evolve

Bonnat remains based at its historic home in Voiron, where more than a century of family knowledge continues to influence its chocolate.

Yet heritage has not meant standing still. From Félix Bonnat’s early adoption of new chocolate-making equipment to Raymond Bonnat’s development of the Grands Crus and Stéphane Bonnat’s work with cacao growers, each generation has added something to the family’s approach.

That combination makes Bonnat particularly relevant to today’s renewed interest in cacao origin, terroir and bean-to-bar chocolate.

Long before those ideas became familiar language among craft chocolate consumers, the Bonnat family was exploring how the character of an individual cacao could be expressed through chocolate.