Barlovento Chocolates

I generally buy at the LakePark Farmer’s Market. Great family business – nice people.
All Venezuelan chocolate, well-​crafted into unusual but not freaky flavors. Fine ganache-​filled «truffles»: my husband is partial to the passion fruit ganache, I particularly like the Chile arbol Apricot, but the tarragon, cardamom honey and crème de mure (blackberry) are also standouts.
The chocolate covered almonds are simply the best I’ve ever tasted (and we did a Paris chocolates tour a few years ago, so that’s an experienced opinion!). Chocolate covered dried Bing cherries are how they got started, and they are still excellent. The bars are a staple around our house.

I agree with everyone else. These are REALLY good chocolates. Rich dark truffles, not too sweet, great flavors. I wish they did mail order…

Omg! So good!
I stumbled on this booth at a festival and I can’t wait to go the store to try and buy more.
I had the Venezuelan Dark Chocolate with caramel, topped with sea salt. Everything!

Great chocolates, great people.

Excellent! The Bay Area is full of wonder but very underwhelming when it comes to chocolate. Barlovento Chocolates has single-​handedly changed my opinion. Beautiful, flavorful, very nice presentation. Truly superior varietal artisan chocolate. Try the truffles but don’t forget to grab a couple bars. Delicious!

Delicious! We had Barlovento do the favors for our wedding guests and they were amazing! We ordered over 100 boxes of sea salted dark chocolate caramels and they all came perfectly packaged in an insulated box and were totally delicious. All of our guests raved about the chocolates after the event. As a special touch they added our names and the wedding date on a small card printed inside the box, visible from underneath. Definitely recommend these chocolates and supporting this lovely local small business! Thank you Barlovento!

Amazing! I tried these chocolates at the Real Food Festival in Oakland. They are very generous with samples of all of the truffles. Some are spicy, while others have unique fruity accents (like Meyer Lemon). All had the same rich, delicious chocolate. I decided to buy an extra dark, Venezuelan chocolate bar. It was a taste sensation, for lack of a better term! It was surprisingly rich and creamy for dark chocolate… The kind of chocolate you want to savor slowly. I found myself closing my eyes and allowing the chocolate to melt in my mouth for a while. Pair this chocolate with a glass of red wine and you will forget all your worries.

Yes, yes, yes.
From among the dizzying foodie hyperbola that has taken off in the bay area like a cluster bomb of absurdity, a few shells actually hit the target. Barlovento Chocolates stands out from the masses as a gastronomic depth charge.
They don’t have as wide a selection as some of the larger producers, but the quality and freshness are so much better than any other Bay Area chocolatier I am aware of that I don’t even think about what they don’t have. They do have about 20 different classic and imaginative flavors of chocolates as well as chocolate bars ranging in cacao content so that each taste can find the style it likes. I was a «72%er» in my younger days, but I have become a «64%er» in my later years as I have come to appreciate the silkiness a good dose of cocoa butter provides.
A major important detail for me is the absence of cloying sweetness that is too common in chocolates. Barlovento focuses on flavors and aromas without any excessive sweetness.
Here is a small sampling of my impressions:
The mint chocolate captures a fresh herbaceous quality rather than just the minty toothpaste quality that so many chocolates carry.
The passionfruit is bright and electric but balanced with the dark richness of the Venezuelan cacao they work with.
The «Mayan hot chocolate» carries a dusting of richly fruited chili powder that stands out from the chocolate base but does not overwhelm it or linger too long on the palate.
The cinnamon chocolate is the only one I found less than brilliant because it was lacking a really true character of cinnamon.
I try to resist direct comparisons, but one comes to mind. When I lived in Paris, there was a small chocolatier that I was drawn to like a vampire in search of a regular blood meal. La Bonbonnerie de la Trinité was my go-​to for regular chocolate fixes. I don’t know if it is still there, but the memory of that place lives with me twenty years later. I missed it when I moved away and always had friends from Paris bring some when they came to visit. Barlovento does not have the same range of flavors, but it does have the same style and level of quality.
Most people have said the prices are moderate. I consider $ 2.50 per chocolate and $ 6.50 per bar more in the category of pricey, but the important issue is VALUE. This is a good value because the quality is worth it.

Time: 12:12pm/60°F mostly sunny
Purpose: Contact Pete the owner schedule a meeting for possible account.
Set-​up: Located in the industrial area of JLS nearby businesses. Small warehouse type feel with a room dedicated to chocolate making only. The room is off limits to anyone unless you wear one of those hazradoud material suits then you can enter. Room is sterilized with windows plaster with foil like insulation padding seal to the smallest micron. The outter area is share with another local business. The boxes were filled with ice packs and shipping materials. There are more to say but I can not collaborate on it for privacy reasons.
Staff: Pete himself was there a man of integrity delivers as promised. You will know who’s Pete right away if you’re familiar with grand ave farmers market.
Cleanliness: Very clean for this type of business.
Eats/​Drinks: Really wanted a hot chocolate from their brand but only came out with a 12pc box, priceless. Assorted box that was made previous day but just as good as any other branded only about $ 6 – 7 cheaper.
Products: Gourmet hand crafted chocolates of milk/​dark even scented versions. Too much to list but be worth a trip to area.
Punch Lines: Small place that cranks out small batches, sterilized room, shipping available, easy parking street 2hrs max, walking distances to JLS and nearby restaurants, price matches or surpass others on market, custom made can be had, chocolates for all ocassions or events.
Tradeoffs: Hand crafted not factory assembly line each piece has it’s own individual uniqueness.
Final Thoughts: I though I know how chocolates were made thinking easy pour in mold while melted goes in fridge til harden then turn over pop it out. Sounds easy? No there’s a lot more that goes behind the scenes of production here. Next time if you’re craving chocolate stop by before 4:30pm on weekdays and get a few of their offerings. Pete you’re awesome!

Worth every cent. My new favorite, the small chocolate bar with Himalayan Pink Salt.

Yes Please. Their boxed chocolate are good but it’s the tiny bars of salted chocolates that make me swoon. Love the abundance of salt especially the Himalayan Pink Salt. Perfect balance of salty and sweet. The chocolate piece are good but have a milder flavour than I prefer. All of them are beautiful and wonderful gifts. Wish they had longer hours. The design of the bars and chocolates are stylish enough for a Marina girl and an Oakland hipster but the taste is what really matter and the bars really have that.

Got Barlovento Chocolates with an arrangement from a local floral shop. 64% cacao bar with dried cherries and 73% cacao bar with almonds. Both exceptionally good, balance, not too sweet perfect sweetness. The bar with the cherries were awesome. Will definitely check out their shop to try more stuff! I wish I could find out more about in their website…

What a treat (literally) to find Barlovento at the Marin County farmers’ market!
After a sample of a cinnamon chocolate truffle (smooth, creamy chocolate with the most mellow cinnamon flavor), I had to have more. The gent staffing the booth gave me a great overview of the different salts used to flavor their salted chocolate bars (64% Venezuelan cacao) and I went with the Himalayan Pink Salt. It has (well, had) the perfect balance of salty and sweet; both the chocolate and the salt stood out in each bite. I was very sad when it was all gone.

A true five star chocolatier.
I came to the Eat Real festival thinking I’d find the incredible Vice Chocolates, but little did I know that they’re not the only exceptional chocolate makers in Oakland.
Even at this event, I tasted all the chocolate I came across and when I got to Barlovento, there was almost a relief in tasting chocolate this essentially delicious.
I would have stayed longer to taste more samples of their selection, but the individual gems seemed to precious to take advantage of… I already felt guilty trying two. The cinnamon/​vanilla bean was my first sample, and though I generally balk at cinnamon in chocolate, I decided to give it a chance. And again, the quality of the chocolate just sang through the little bit that dangled off my toothpick.
Then a delicious taste of Old Vine Zinfandel, which I later bought, showed me how much better this often overly fruity alcohol takes when married with cocoa. The crème de mure was absolutely fantastic, and I’m still waiting to savor my raspberry truffle (which tends to be a favorite flavor for me). The dark with nibs was pure greatness, with a crunch. And the fresh mint tasted like real mint, which shouldn’t be such a novelty but certainly made my eyes light up in admiration.
I hope I get to buy more of their chocolates– it seems like a small operation so I’ll have to seek them out. But with options like meyer lemon and passion fruit still waiting to be tried, I am definitely going to make the effort to find them again.
Sublime!

Pete you are such a hipster sharing guy.
Thanks for giving us big portions during the tasting. And thanks for making it easy to purchase chocolates. Keep on being laid back.

Fortunate enough to have stumbled upon this stall at the Cal Ave Farmers Market in PA today. The owner was handing out lots of samples, and was very friendly and answered all questions. Ended up picking up a box of 8 different flavors. Each chocolate is so bright and fresh — you can really taste the actual ingredients used to flavor. I can’t speak highly enough of the mint chocolate one. It was the best mint chocolate I’ve ever had: it was like biting straight into a fresh mint leaf, and it really mixed well with the dark bitter chocolate.
If you come across these chocolates at the farmers market, make sure you try them!

It really doesn’t get better than Barlovento chocolates. I love visiting their stand at the Oakland farmer’s market. Peter always recognizes my face and knows what I want haha. Their chocolate covered cherries are the best you’ll ever find! There is no substitute!
Their truffles are really amazing too! I like the fruity truffles ie the rasberry, lemon, and passion fruit, YUM!
If you haven’t tried their chocolates, you really are missing out! Do yourself a favor and visit them! You won’t regret it!

Barlovento was giving out samples of their expresso truffle. tasted interesting enough for me to consider buying some of the 12 kinds of trufffles that were available. pricing was 4/​$ 7 or. 8/​$ 13
locale: grand lake farmers market.
sampling: 3 oz bar venezulan dark chocolate (5.5) 74% cocoa.
–mostly interested in the chocolate, not the filling.
–chocolate taste intense,
choc notes:
–truffles seem small, but i haven’t seen anything yet.
–glad i went with chocolate solids, truffles just too small.
–prefer truffles a little bigger.

I became acquainted with this chocolatier at the Oakland Farmer’s Market on LakeShore and Grand.
The sample I tried (Crème de Mure) was simply divine. I asked the founder, Peter Brydon, who was actually selling them at the farmer’s market, to pick me out his favorite 8.
The sample chocolate was clearly the best of them all… but also in contention is the Dark Chocolate Truffle w/​cacao nibs. Curious, I picked off a nib (made by Sharfenberger), ate it and thought it was nasty, but when I ate the truffle as a whole, the flavors paired very well.
8 chocolates cost 12ish bucks so that should stop you from eating the whole box in one sitting, though you will want to…
My one eensy complaint is that the Mayan Hot chcolate truffle has the cayenne pepper sprinkled on the outside. I love the hotness, and the flavor, but think it should be folded into the chocolate to avoid becoming a health hazard. After eating this truffle I inadvertantly brushed my eye. Oi! Wash hands after eating…
Meanwhile…I am pleased to say that when I go to the farmer’s market I can buy chocolates right away and don’t have to skulk around til noon waiting for Michael Mischer to open up.

My co-​worker told me he goes to the Grand Lake Farmer’s Market on Sat a lot so I had him pick me up some chocolates from Barlovento.
He bought me a box of truffles, 8 in a box for $ 9.
I ate 4 already and so far all were really rich, creamy, and delicious.
Not sure what was what from looking at it (menu included but no pics), but ate these for sure:
Mayan hot chocolate truffle: wrapped in gold foil, covered in dark chocolate sprinkled w/​cayanne pepper.
Espresso: stars. Ingredients: cream, 64% dark chocolate, 44% milk chocolate, sugar, butter, coffee beans.
2 others don’t know, but were good.
Go get some!
website under construction:
Contact: Peter Brydon
510−529−1641