Mmmmmm Chocolate! In my mind, no trip to Switzerland would be complete without a visit to a chocolate factory. Fortunately the Maison Callier Chocolate Factory is very near Gruyere.
Tours are offered in many different languages. While waiting for the English tour, we looked through the store at all the boxes and bags of chocolates. So our mouths were already watering before we even started the tour.
Some of the chocolate making process is described as well as the history of Maison Callier.
Cacao beans
The tour is automated as you walk through. There are moving parts, lighting effects, and narration, then a door opens and you walk through to the next room.
In the photo above, there is liquid chocolate being stirred.
Then, the most exciting part of the tour……The tasting room!
You get to walk around and sample any and everything. There is no limit, except of course you cannot take any out of the room.
The coffee flavored ones on the right of the photo were particularly good. Although, really, there was not any bad chocolate. The Swiss chocolate is amazingly creamy and rich.
I am typically very good about avoiding sugar, but I made an exception today. It was a lot more sweetness than I was used to, but it was Swiss chocolate, so you will get no complaints from me.
A couple tips:
- In the tasting room, they save the best for last. So go easy at the beginning of the tasting tables and save room.
- The Nestle Callier Outlet store is only about one block away. While it was not as big and did not have as much chocolate as we thought it might, they did have some chocolates at 50% off. Also, they had hot chocolate mix, which the factory did not have. So we were pretty happy with our shopping.
- If taking a train, make sure to get off at the Broc Fabrique stop and not the Broc stop. Or you will have a long walk.
- There is a small building off to the left side of the main entrance. This building has more expensive special filled chocolates. They also provide samples, and let me tell you they are just amazing! They have some interesting and fun flavors too. Some of the flavors we liked were, dark chocolate passion fruit, lime verbena, chocolate ganache with ginger, well actually, everything we tried was exceptional.