Please meet Armin Untersteiner and Katya Waldboth, the makers at Karuna. They live and work in South Tyrol (Bolzano). Italy, which is a German-speaking area in the north. They founded Karuna in 2018 and have the distinction of being the first in their region to craft organic bean-to-bar chocolate.

In 2014 Katya was working in Southern India and the couple was introduced to (and fell in love with) cocoa farming. When they returned home, they realized that no local artisans were producing organic bean-to-bar chocolate. They decided to turn their burgeoning passion into a profession and enlisted the whole family. The stunning packaging and mold design were created by Armin’s younger brother.

Karuna crafts chocolate using exclusively fine flavor beans that are ethically sourced from farmers whom they pay two to three times the fair trade price. They also use fairly traded organic raw cane sugar from Brazil and organic cocoa butter pressed from two of the finest cacaos on earth: Arriba Nacional from Ecuador and Nacional from Peru.

Armin and Katya put so much love into their chocolate. You’ll taste it for sure. Their entire process is also plant-based and completely traceable.