Daryll Quaresma, a third-generation dairy farmer sold his long time, family-owned cow dairy to one of his siblings 16 years ago before focusing his attention on farming almonds, grapes, corn, and winter forage in San Joaquin and Merced counties.

Like his father and grandfather before him, Daryll had a good head for business and so as his harvest grew, he and his wife Di, established their own Ripon-based company, California Almonds LLC.  

 With a background in marketing, Di was eager to help her husband build their almond business.

“I wanted to put all my talents and gifts into what my husband was selling,” she said.  

Using her gifts and talents is exactly what she has done as she promotes the company’s raw almonds, Dark Chocolate Almonds, Milk Chocolate Almonds and the vastly popular Almondée, a natural, delicious almond butter, wherever she goes which is taking the almond loving world by storm.

Unlike their almond butter competitors, that add ingredients such as sugar, cocoa butter, palm oil or salt to create almond butter, California Almonds uses just one ingredient — fresh almonds roasted to perfection.

“People often ask what’s the secret to Almondée and I tell them it’s just like making a good wine where you need a variety of grapes. When making Almondée we use a good variety of almonds and know the best way to roast them in order to make perfect tasting almond butter every time.”

Due to California being the only state that grows almonds, a number of out-of-state consumers have come to appreciate the ability of ordering California Almonds products through Amazon and the company website www.caalmonds.com for their needs.

“One of our biggest sale states is New York, they love what California grows and they love California Almonds” shares Di with great pride.

The growing business ships 80% of their products to competitors in New York, Colorado, Washington and Oregon. 

“Because our competitors are not almond farmers they actually rely us to grow the almonds here in California then ship them out to them.”

Almondée is presently sold at Save Mart, Lucky, Raley’s, a number of Bay Area stores, and soon at Safeway. Di said she won’t stop marketing the home-grown product that she believes in until it becomes a household name.

When asked about how she came up with the name Almondée, Di quickly admits to receiving inspiration from above.

“I was thinking about how words like Happy, Yippy, Funny, Sunny all ended with that “e” sound and then one morning I woke up knowing that I was going to call our almond butter Almondée.  I knew it was a God thing.”

Another “God thing” that recently took place was entering a cooking contest for the opportunity to cook with food guru, Guy Fieri at the 2016 Baconfest held in Lathrop last month.  To enter the contest, Di combined her home-made Almond Butter Brownie recipe with sugar coated bacon bits in which she won a spot as one of the semi-finalists at the Baconfest.  While Di was excited about the possibility of cooking with Guy Fieri and winning the monetary prize that could help toward developing a non-profit organization, “Make Your Day” in which people in need would receive a little something for encouragement to help make their day, her ultimate goal at the Baconfest was to introduce the professional chef to Almondée.

Although Di did not win the final cook off, she did manage to fulfill her ultimate goal.

“I had an Almondée squeeze pack in my hand and so when I shook Guy’s hand, I passed it right over to him.  I told him, You’ve got to try it.  It’s to die for and my name is Di which made him smile and laugh.”

For more information about Almondée and other products offered by California Almonds call (888) 521-7020 or visit www.caalmonds.com.