Eating chocolate is easy. Making it is the day out.
Which Brussels workshop lets you temper your own bar and carry the box home. What the Zurich factory costs before the queue builds. Whether a cacao estate in Maui beats a museum in Cologne. Reviews of every chocolate tour, tasting and workshop you can book.
Five chocolate days worth planning a trip around.
A ticket, a tempering bench, a farm where the pods are still on the tree. What each one costs, and what the people who booked it say.
01The easy first oneLindt Home of Chocolate Museum Entry TicketA whole Swiss production floor behind glass, a nine-metre chocolate fountain and a tasting counter nobody moves you along. Take the opening slot; the queue builds by eleven.
02The one you makeBelgian Chocolate Making Workshop with TastingsTwo hours at a Brussels bench: temper, mould, fill, cap, decorate. You leave with a box of your own pralines and cocoa butter under your nails.
03The bean-to-bar hourThe Chocolatarium Chocolate Tour Experience in EdinburghEdinburgh, ninety minutes, and roughly a dozen tastings from raw nib to finished bar. The clearest explanation of tempering anyone gives.
04Where it growsMaui Ku’ia Estate Guided Cacao Farm Tour and TastingA working Maui cacao estate. Pods split in front of you, the white pulp tasted before it is fermented, then the bars the beans end up as.
05The pastry versionParis French Sweets Tasting Tour with Pastries and ChocolatesThree hours across Paris chocolatiers and patisseries. Come hungry — this one sits closer to lunch than to a tasting.
The chocolate tours more travellers take than any other.
Every chocolate tour on the site →Museum tickets that cost less than a coffee, workshops that fill a fortnight ahead, and one Zurich day that outsells everything else here.
1
Lindt Home of Chocolate Museum Entry Ticket
At Lindt Home of Chocolate in Zurich, you follow cocoa from bean to bar with a multilingual audio guide, multimedia displays, production views, and generous tasting stations. Expect a self-guided visit lasting about an hour or two, plus free lockers, a café, and a large Lindt shop.
From · $22
Read our review →
2
Choco-Story Brussels: Chocolate Museum Entrance with Tasting
from $18
3
City Tour, Cruise, and Lindt Home of Chocolate Visit
from $103
4
The Chocolatarium Chocolate Tour Experience in Edinburgh
from $44
5
Award-Winning Geneva Chocolate &Old Town Tour with Boat Ride (3h)
from $131
6
Yarra Valley Wine, Gin, Whisky and Chocolate Tour
from $93
7
4×4 Dominican Adventure with Chocolate and Coffee Tasting
from $59
8
Chocolate Museum Entrance Ticket
from $19
Brussels or Bruges: pick the Belgian chocolate afternoon that fits.
Belgium is the largest set of bookings on this site and it splits four ways. What each kind costs, how long it runs, and which of the two cities it suits.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · Belgian Chocolate Making Workshop with Tastings
Make your ownTwo hours at the bench; you leave with the box you filled.
Taste your way roundFour or five houses on foot, one praline at each.
Chocolate with beerA dark bar against a Trappist dubbel. It works.
The whole old townChocolate, waffles and the Grand-Place in one loop.
All 50 Belgian chocolate days →
Six countries that take their chocolate seriously.
Belgian pralines and the bench you fill them at, Swiss milk chocolate at the factory that invented it, French bean-to-bar counters, cacao ground on stone in Oaxaca, Turin gianduja, and American estates growing their own pods. Six places to book, and the best day out in each.
A tasting is the cheapest way into any chocolate city.
An hour or two on foot, a guide, and six or seven houses you would otherwise have walked straight past. The three below are the most booked; the rest sort by city underneath.
Every chocolate workshop ends with a box you filled.
Ninety minutes to three hours: temper on marble, pipe into the moulds, fill, cap, decorate, box. Classes cap at ten or twelve people, run to fixed session times, and most take children from about six. Send the allergen question by email before you book, not on the day.
What a chocolate day actually costs.
Every tour here grouped by price. A museum ticket and an afternoon at a bench sit further apart than most people expect.
Museum entry, single-city praline walks and the short guided tastings.
Making workshops, the big factory days and the walks that feed you properly.
Private chocolatiers, full-day estate visits and the wine-country pairings.
Switzerland: the factory, the old-town counter, or the cheese board.
Everything in Switzerland →
Milk chocolate was invented in Vevey and the country has never stopped explaining itself. Zurich runs the big modern factory experience, Geneva the small family houses on foot, and half of Switzerland will hand you cheese alongside it.
Zurich, the whole production line
The tallest chocolate fountain anywhere, a working line behind glass and a free-flow tasting room at the end that nobody hurries you out of. Book the opening slot and you are through before the coaches arrive.
Geneva’s family chocolatiers
Six or seven houses in a couple of hours, most of them a single shopfront with the kitchen directly behind it. This is where you find out what Swiss milk chocolate is supposed to taste like.
Chocolate with Gruyère
The dairy at Gruyères and the Cailler factory at Broc sit twenty minutes apart, so the local answer is to do both before lunch. Salt, fat and sugar, in that order.
Three things a chocolate trip does that no other food tour does.
Wine has cellars and cheese has caves. Only chocolate can take you from a pod hanging on a tree to a bar you tempered yourself, inside the same week.
Splitting a pod on the tree
A ripe cacao pod is the size of a rugby ball and the colour of a bruise. Cut one open on the estate and the beans come out wrapped in white pulp that tastes of lychee and mangosteen, nothing whatsoever like chocolate. Fermentation in wooden boxes and then roasting do all of that afterwards. Hawaii, Ecuador and the Dominican estates run the visits worth the drive.
- 1Maui Ku’ia Estate Guided Cacao Farm Tour and Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,103 reviews
- 2Award Winning Farm Tour: Coffee, Chocolate and Unique Gifts★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 484 reviews
- 3Finca 18 Puerto Vallarta Tequila Tour + Chocolate Pairing★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 393 reviews
Tempering on a marble slab
Chocolate is glossy and snaps cleanly only because its cocoa butter has been coaxed into one particular crystal form. Getting there means melting it, pouring two thirds onto cold marble, working it with a scraper until it thickens, then bringing it back up a couple of degrees. It is the part every workshop is built around, and the part that defeats most people at home.
- 1Chocolate Workshop in Chocolate Museum w/ Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,802 reviews
- 2Belgian Chocolate Making Workshop with Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,629 reviews
- 3Chocolate Museum Visit with Workshop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,474 reviews
A production line behind glass
Milk chocolate was invented in Vevey in 1875 and conching in Bern four years later, and the country turned both into an industry. The modern factory visits put the machines behind glass, run the tasting room on the honour system and finish at a counter you can go back to. Cailler at Broc and Lindt at Kilchberg both do a version; the Zurich one is the largest.
- 1Lindt Home of Chocolate Museum Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 9,329 reviews
- 2City Tour, Cruise, and Lindt Home of Chocolate Visit★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 4,624 reviews
- 3Zurich Sights: Cruise, Lindt Chocolate and optional FIFA Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 1,028 reviews
Four chocolate bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of a trip can be arranged the night before from a cafe table. These four cannot. Workshop benches are counted in seats, factory entry runs on timed tickets, and a cacao estate answers to the harvest rather than to your itinerary.
- 01Belgian Chocolate Making Workshop with TastingsBenches are counted. A class of ten fills days ahead in Brussels and Bruges, and the afternoon sessions go first.
- 02Lindt Home of Chocolate Museum Entry TicketEntry is a timed ticket with a cap on each slot. The first hour of the day is the only one without a crowd at the fountain.
- 03Maui Ku’ia Estate Guided Cacao Farm Tour and TastingEstates run visits around the harvest and the fermentation boxes, not around a daily timetable. Some open two mornings a week.
- 04Choco-Story Brussels: Chocolate Museum Entrance with TastingThe tasting portions are counted per booking, so walk-ins get the museum and not always the chocolate. Reserve if the tasting is the point.
Chocolate is a pairing ingredient, and the best afternoons know it.
A dark bar against a Trappist dubbel, gianduja against an espresso, a Gruyère board an hour from the Cailler line, and Caribbean estates pouring rum out of the same building. Pairing tours run longer, cost less per hour and usually turn into the better half of the day.
By kind — museum, bench, farm or pairing
Brussels, Bruges, Paris, Zurich, Turin: the run most chocolate trips end up doing.
Bruges
GenevaThe newest chocolate tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Venchi Rialto: Chocolate Tasting Experience in Venice
Read our review →
A Sweet Stroll Through Venice: Pastries, Chocolate, and Gelato
Read our review →
St Lucia Treasures – (Chocolates Rum and Rafting)
Read our review →
From Puerto Plata Priv: Cocoa, Coffee, Cigars & Local Market
Read our review →
Puerto Plata City Tour with the Mount Isabel, Rum & Chocolate
Read our review →
Cocoa & Artisan Chocolate Route with an Historical Tour in Puerto Plata City
Read our review →
Porto Best of the Best Port Tasting with Artisan Chocolates
Read our review →
Chocolate Museum – Chocolate’s Delicious Journey + Tasting
Read our review →
Make Your Own Chocolate with Oaxacan Tradition Private Class
Read our review →
