Palette de Bine

Crafting Chocolate with a Quebec Identity

2047 Ch. du Village, Mont-Tremblant, QC
info@palettedebine.com

In Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, Palette de Bine has built an international reputation by keeping the cacao bean at the centre of everything it makes. Led by chocolate maker Christine Blais, the company produces chocolate in small batches from beans personally selected from independent producers around the world.

Even the company’s playful name expresses its Quebec identity. Palette is a Quebec term for a chocolate bar, while bine refers to a bean. Behind the humour is a serious commitment to controlling the chocolate-making process from raw cacao to the finished, hand-wrapped bar.

Making Chocolate from the Bean Forward

At Palette de Bine, making chocolate involves far more than melting and moulding couverture.

Cacao arriving at the Mont-Tremblant workshop is roasted, winnowed, ground, conched, aged, tempered and moulded before the finished bars are wrapped by hand. Working in small quantities allows the maker to adjust the process according to the character of individual cacao origins.

The result is a collection designed to show how dramatically cacao can vary. Rather than adding ingredients simply to create novelty, Palette de Bine places particular emphasis on the natural flavours already present in carefully fermented and dried beans.

Building Relationships with Cacao Producers

Understanding where those beans originate is an important part of the company’s philosophy.

Palette de Bine works with cacao from independent producers and has developed bars around origins in countries including Peru, Haiti, Guatemala, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tanzania. Blais has also travelled to cacao-producing regions herself.

For example, the company’s Tanzania Kokoa Kamili 72% uses organically grown cacao from Tanzania’s Kilombero Valley. Palette de Bine notes that Blais visited the Kokoa Kamili operation in 2019. The organization works directly with thousands of local cacao farmers, giving the Canadian maker a closer connection to the agricultural communities behind its chocolate.

Maple Creates a Distinctly Canadian Chocolate

One of Palette de Bine’s most recognizable creations brings that international cacao together with an unmistakably Canadian ingredient: maple.

Its Bine à l’érable concept replaces conventional cane sugar with maple sugar, allowing the flavour of cacao to interact with maple rather than simply using maple as a filling or added flavour.

The approach has performed exceptionally well in competition. A Wild Bolivia version of Bine à l’érable won gold at the 2016 International Chocolate Awards World Final. It took world gold again in 2017 and won another gold at the 2018 Americas competition.

That makes Palette de Bine an especially good example of how Canadian ingredients can become part of serious origin-focused craft chocolate.

Recognition on the International Stage

The maple bars are only part of Palette de Bine’s award history.

In 2016, its Haiti 70% earned silver at the International Chocolate Awards World Final, while the company was also named America’s Chocolate Maker of the Year.

The following year brought three silver medals at the Americas competition for Guatemala Polochic 70%, Haiti Pisa and Peru Marañón 70%. In 2019, La Reunion Trinidad 70% earned gold, with several other origin bars receiving silver. More recent awards have included recognition for maple milk chocolate and Tanzania Kokoa Kamili.

Despite that international recognition, Palette de Bine retains the character of a small Quebec chocolate maker.

Through careful cacao sourcing, hands-on production and a willingness to bring Quebec ingredients such as maple into the bean-to-bar conversation, Palette de Bine has created chocolate that connects distant cacao-growing regions with a distinctly Canadian sense of place.