Gmeiner Confiserie: chocolate in the fourth generation – and a recipe under the apron
When Otto Gmeiner had to go to war, his wife Wilhelmine carried on the bakery in Oberkirch on her own. The handwritten recipes she kept with her, so the family tells it, hidden under her apron. One of them – the butter biscuits – still exists today, with her photograph on the packet. That is the story of Confiserie Gmeiner in a single picture: craftsmanship you do not let out of your hands.
From village bakery to confiserie
The business was founded in 1898 as a bakery in Oberkirch in Baden, on the edge of the Black Forest. In 1936 Otto and Wilhelmine Gmeiner took it over, in 1967 their son Hansjörg with his wife Marianne – and they turned the bakery into a pâtisserie with a café. In 1977 the first branch in Offenburg was added.
In 1997 Volker Gmeiner joined the business, the fourth generation. He, as he says, “grew up above the shop”, trained as a pastry chef, studied business administration and worked in the Harrods bakery in London and in Vienna, among other places. Since 2005 he has been running the business together with his wife Christine, who is responsible for staff and packaging design. Her sentence on the subject: “What is made by hand also has to look as if it were made by hand.”
Today Gmeiner produces in Appenweier and supplies eleven of its own cafés and shops from Baden-Baden via Freiburg and Stuttgart to Munich – fresh each day, with its own drivers. Around 280 people work here, up to 320 in the Christmas season. Volker Gmeiner is a member of Relais Desserts, an association of around 100 leading pâtissiers worldwide, and the Italian Gambero Rosso counts Gmeiner among the best chocolate shops in Europe.
Six principles
What is astonishing at this size: it remains handwork. Gmeiner names six principles – classic handwork, production fresh each day, no preservatives, no artificial flavourings, the best raw ingredients, regional suppliers. Candied orange peel, vanilla sugar, jams and truffle fillings are made in house. “Chocolate is the main carrier of flavour,” says Volker Gmeiner. “We don’t need any frills there.”
The couverture comes from Valrhona in France; alongside it Gmeiner runs a line of its own with wild-growing cacao from the flooded forests of the Amazon, which secures a living for around 300 gatherer families.
Kera Till: chocolate with an illustration
The most striking bars we stock are those from the collaboration with Kera Till, a German-French illustrator from Munich who otherwise draws for Hermès, Chanel or Vogue. Gmeiner casts the bars by hand, Kera Till designs the sleeves – chocolate you give as a present without wrapping it.
For Advent there is the “Christmas Flamingo”: milk chocolate with 35 per cent cacao, crisp butter sablé and a thread of caramel. For the turn of the year “Happy New Year” – white chocolate with pieces of raspberry that crackle on the tongue. And all year round the “Sweet Lady”: 70 per cent dark chocolate with hazelnut brittle, for everyone who finds milk chocolate too sweet.
Biscuits after Oma Wilhelmine
The butter biscuits “Oma Wilhelmine” are sablés with 40 per cent butter and a pinch of sea salt, baked fresh every day. The vanilla biscuits are crumbly butter rounds with real Bourbon vanilla, the cinnamon rounds crumbly cinnamon biscuits with pieces of caramel – both taste of Christmas baking without your having to bake yourself.
For small tokens there are the Christmas chocolate as a 45-gram bar and, in a vegan version, the “Powerfruit” bar with dark plant-based chocolate and dried fruit – gluten-free, without artificial additives.
Our tip
Gmeiner biscuits keep for about eight weeks, the bars longer. For the Advent table: cinnamon rounds and vanilla biscuits on a plate, with a pot of Ronnefeldt “Winter Fairy Tale”. For the gift basket: “Christmas Flamingo” on top, so that the motif can be seen. The cinnamon rounds and the vanilla biscuits are, by the way, also in our gift box “Die grosse Bescherung”.
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