Berger Chocolate from Lofer in Salzburger Land
Berger Feinste Confiserie has been making chocolate by hand in Lofer, in Salzburg's Saalach Valley, since 1994. Hubert and Christine Berger started out in his father's garage; today around 100 people work for the company. Certified organic, a Fairtrade partner, and still stirring every filling in-house.
Berger chocolate is the chocolate made by Berger Feinste Confiserie in Lofer, a village in Salzburg's Saalach Valley, where Hubert and Christine Berger started out in 1994 with a garage and two pairs of hands. Today the company has around 100 employees, a flagship store on Schokoladenweg and eight further shops. The handwork has stayed, joined by organic ingredients and, for selected bars, Fairtrade cocoa: warm, meticulous, idiosyncratic.
A garage on the edge of Lofer
On September 23, 1994, Hubert and Christine Berger made their first praline in a 25-square-meter garage that had previously belonged to the taxi business of Hubert's father.
“We made our first pralines in the garage. I was just twenty at the time, and my husband wasn't yet thirty,” Christine recalls. Hubert is a master confectioner who had spent his journeyman years at confectioneries in Germany and Belgium; she brought an eye for the bigger picture. At first the two of them worked alone, with his mother helping out now and then.
The start was a curious one all the same: because nobody could make sense of the little shop in front of the garage, people came in and asked whether they could get a haircut there. It took a while for the first Berger chocolate to find its way out into the world. In 1997 Feinkost Käfer came on board as a customer, and in 2001 the first branch opened in Saalfelden.
Today the flagship store stands on the same spot; its address is Schokoladenweg 1, literally Chocolate Lane 1. The company grew slowly and on its own resources, shop by shop, usually whenever an opportunity happened to come along. To this day, everything is made in Lofer and nowhere else. If you visit, you'll find Café ANNA above the shop, run by the Bergers' daughter Anna together with her father.
Bars, cat tongues and fruit jellies
In our shop you'll find the range across all its lines, from the plain bar and filled varieties to cat tongues and jellies made entirely without gelatin.
The foundation is formed by the two classics: the organic milk chocolate with 37 percent cocoa, milky, creamy and delicate, and the organic dark chocolate with 70 percent, in which Berger itself tastes hints of blackcurrant and banana. The refined and filled varieties build on these two, each one balanced to taste individually.
Then there are the organic milk chocolate cat tongues, thin and quick to melt, the Marc de Champagne Rose, which Berger names as its best-selling bar, and the fruit jelly mix from the candy makers' workshop.
For special occasions there are themed bars such as Lieblingsmensch (favorite person) or Happy Birthday, where an organic milk chocolate with 37 percent cocoa sits beneath the greeting. The company brings out six themed collections a year, and every Berger chocolate gets its own packaging to match. Christine Berger is in charge of the design herself, and you can see it in the bars before you even open them. “We stage a coherent product world around what's inside,” she says.
Handwork, organic ingredients and long conching
“Despite all the growth and expansion over the years, we have stayed true to the principle of handwork to this day,” says Christine Berger. On average, a praline goes through five steps.
Hubert Berger describes what that looks like: “The finest fillings are still lovingly cooked, poured into a wafer-thin chocolate shell, coated with melt-in-the-mouth chocolate and finally decorated by hand with great artistry.” Cooked, poured, garnished, and every single time by hand.
It also shows in the time the company takes. “There are chocolates that are conched for between three and five hours. Ours are conched for between 60 and 70 hours,” says Hubert. Conching means stirring the liquid chocolate mass for hours until the bitter compounds evaporate and the melt turns silky. For a Berger chocolate, that is the difference between sandy and velvety.
Berger has been a Fairtrade partner since 2016; most of its base chocolates are organic, and the cream, herbs and fine spirits come from the region. The switch was prompted by the discovery of mineral oil in bought-in goods. “Nothing stayed the way it was,” Hubert says of the period that followed. Today the company voluntarily has its products tested for residues and packs them in FSC-certified virgin-fiber paper printed with water-based inks. The organic control number AT-BIO-301 appears on every organic bar.
Berger has also revived the nearly vanished Austrian apprenticeship trade of candy and confectionery maker and trains apprentices itself. The company is the largest employer in the Saalach Valley, around 90 percent of the workforce are women, and since 2010 Berger has worked with Pro Mente to employ people with disabilities. For a business that began in a garage, that is a considerable responsibility.
From the Dominican Republic to Madagascar
The Bergers go and see for themselves where their cocoa comes from. Franz Berger traveled to the Dominican Republic, and Anna and Franz to Madagascar.
For the organic milk chocolate, the raw cocoa comes from the CONACADO cooperative in the Dominican Republic, a partner of many years. Franz got to know the growing regions at the International Fairtrade Cocoa Forum. For the organic dark chocolate, Berger has recently begun sourcing beans from the Sambirano SA cooperative in northern Madagascar.
There, along the Sambirano River, a grand cru cocoa grows on 2,000 hectares, shaped by nutrient-rich soils and a tropical climate. Behind Sambirano is Philippe Mena, whose company comprises eleven lead farmers, supplied in turn by 1,500 farmers. “We immersed ourselves in the fascinating world of cocoa and witnessed Philippe's dedication and his remarkable support for the farmers,” Franz writes about the trip.
In Madagascar, 70 percent of the population live below the poverty line, which is why the partnership is more than a purchase. You can taste how well the cocoa holds its own in the milk chocolate with roasted hazelnuts, which is almost one quarter nuts.
Award-winning and still down to earth
In 2015, Berger Feinste Confiserie received the Salzburg Business Award as Company of the Year and, in the same year, was named Austria's best family business.
Before that, in 2012, came the right to bear the Salzburg state coat of arms, and as early as 2000 the company was considered the most family-friendly business in Salzburg. Berger supplies establishments such as Meinl am Graben in Vienna and the KaDeWe in Berlin. “This award means a great deal to us. It is, so to speak, the crowning glory of our work,” the Bergers said of the business award. Incidentally, their own website doesn't say a word about it. Hats off.
They have stayed down to earth all the same. “We're from the Pinzgau and deeply rooted in this place,” says Hubert. Their motto sounds less reverent: “Standing still means falling behind. If anyone says ‘We've always done it this way,’ that's five euros for the piggy bank.” Meanwhile the next generation, Anna and Franz, has stepped up to carry on what began in the garage.
If you're tasting your way through the range, start with the plain milk chocolate and work your way up to the filled varieties. That way you'll first taste what the cocoa can do, and then what the confectioners make of it. Somewhere between milky, fruity and bittersweet, yours is waiting.
