Hazelnuts are the fruit of the hazel bush and are usually roundish to oblong in shape. The hazel bush belongs to the birch family. Hazelnuts are particularly captivating with their lovely, sweet, pure nut taste.

The most important farming area for hazelnuts is the Black Sea’s coastline in Turkey – the so-called Levant. Here you find the necessary weather conditions that allow these fruits to best flourish: hot, sticky summers; wet, cold winters; and lots of rain. The hazel bush is a low maintenance plant and does not need much more than this in order to flourish and bear fruit.

Harvesting in August is mostly a case of picking. A small portion of the hazelnuts are picked from the ground if they have been shaken loose or have naturally fallen from the hazel bushes.

An approximately 3 day long drying process takes place on every available outdoor space. After this, the green, dried sepals are removed by machine. Next, the hazelnuts undergo a further drying phase of approximately 7 days.

Now the nuts can be stored on site. In order that they retain their full flavour, RITTER SPORT allows some of the freshly harvested Levantine nuts to be stored in the shells.

Turkish hazelnuts (Levantine) have a substantially thinner shell than hazelnuts from other regions. This means that, when fully matured, their kernels are larger and achieve the ideal diameter of 11 to 13 mm. Hazelnuts in their shell and hazelnut kernels are differentiated between. Their slightly larger size also means that they fit perfectly into RITTER SPORT chocolate, which because of its square shape is also thicker. At the same time, they are matured to just the right degree, giving them their typical full flavour.

To extract hazelnut kernels from their shells, the hard shells are broken by millstones. The millstones are set to the size of the nuts, which have already been sieved to remove any that are too small. The freshly broken hazelnut kernels are then cleaned and machine sorted, before they are used as fillings in RITTER SPORT Whole Hazelnuts, Dark Whole Hazelnuts, and White Whole Hazelnuts. They are then carefully roasted golden-brown, whereby the hazelnuts move through an oven at temperatures of 150-180°C. Their water content drops during roasting from approximately 5% to 1%. This gives the hazelnut kernels their perfect, crunchy bite.

During the cooling period that follows, the kernels are rubbed together to separate the skin from the nuts. After the loose skin has been removed, the hazelnut kernels are firstly machine sorted and then hand-selected and packed in a protective atmosphere. This ensures that they are optimally protected for the approximately one-week journey to Waldenbuch.

Levantine hazelnuts are also finely chopped before being put into RITTER SPORT Raisins & Hazelnuts and RITTER SPORT Rum Raisins Hazelnuts. They are also an essential ingredient, in the form of nut paste, in the fine praline used in RITTER SPORT Praline.