An aniseed…
Our candies are made with Anise. This plant, Pimpinella anisum, is not to be confused with fennel (a vegetable) or with star anise (Chinese anise, the fruit of an exotic tree). The Anise we use is an umbelliferous plant and its small oval fruits, striated longitudinally, have a warm, spicy flavor and a remarkably aromatic scent. We select our aniseeds in August, after they are harvested in Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, Syria, etc.
... sugar…
Then we place the seeds in large pans and pour sugar syrup (water and sugar) over them. The seeds roll over one another and gradually become covered in fine successive layers of syrup, kind of like snowballs tumbling down a snowy hill.
This rotation in pans also makes the candies become smooth, like stones that are rolled on the beach by the incessant waves of the sea. The process involves delicate, patient work; the candy-maker needs 15 days to transform the small seed that weighs barely two milligrams into a one-gram candy.

We have used white sugar since sugar beet was discovered by Olivier de Serres in 1575. Before that, we used cane sugar (slightly grey-reddish-brown).
Darius, back from an expedition in the Indies (510 B.C.) called sugar cane “the reed that produces honey without the help of bees!”.
We still make Anis candies with unrefined cane sugar, in an Ecocert-certified organic collection.