...where was I?

All right, wedding stuff over, now where was I...  oh yes, I left off just before our visit to the chocolate factory.

CHOCOLATE FACTORY!!!

After Riegersburg we took a tour through the Zotter chocolate factory.  With an audio guide to explain the process, you can wander through various tasting stations at your own pace and sample as much as you want.

This is the owner's dream car which apparently inspired a line of unusually flavored chocolate bars.

Roses with cocoa fertilizer.

The group, still not fully aware of what they're in for.

The first stop on the tour is the theater, where we watched a somewhat cheesy video on the history of the factory and how the fair trade stuff works.

...yeah, no one really knows why there's a bunch of chocolate in underwear hung from the world's tiniest cable car track.

After the film, we started the tasting tour.  First stop, roasted cocoa beans.  There were different whole beans available from different regions of the world, each of which had their own distinct character.  I have a definite preference for South American cocoa varieties, particularly the one from Ecuador.

Next, we could taste chocolate at different stages of processing.  Everyone receives a ceramic spoon that they can pump chocolate into from the various chocolate fountains.  This is the evil raw cocoa fountain that looks delicious but is completely bitter.

The audio guide explains various stages in the chocolate making process.

Hazelnut nougat chocolate fountain.

Different parts of the factory are labeled.

And sometimes mini-versions of the big machines are on display next to the relevant section of the factory.  We visited on a Saturday, so the factory wasn't actually in operation that day.

Some sort of plant lab with various coffee varieties.

Students discovering that yes, they really can eat as much as they want.

SPOON!

Next we went down a hallway with different smelling stations that contained spices used in the candy making process.

The next part has some neat machines.  Chocolate bars are placed in chutes and a lever mechanism cracks off a small part of the bar.  First there was an assortment of plain chocolates of different intensities from various regions (still preferred Ecuador), then we could try the various fruit flavored chocolates.

There's a room with an all you can drink hot chocolate bar.

Happy students.

Chocolate coated nuts and berries of various sorts.

I'm still terrible at this selfie thing but I'm under the impression you're not supposed to do it with a real camera.  Here's happy me in front of the endorphin statues.

Afterwards I went with the Dunkl family through the "Edible Zoo", post for a later time.