Aeschbach Chocolatier Tour

What I’m about to tell you may have been the root cause of my recent chocolate overdose I told you about. 

Our niece is in town for two weeks and Zurich doesn’t really have two weeks of tourist fun to offer, especially given our summer weather. It was time to start researching outside of the travel books. Good thing I did, because amongst my research, I found something good. Something real good. Chocolate good. I found factory tour of one of my favorite local chocolate shops; Aeschbach Chocolatier. 

The storefront is tucked in an alley along the cobblestone paths of old town Zurich. I have been a few times and I especially love it for its festive packaging and decor. I also get a kick out of the weird combinations that they come up with, though I can’t say I particularly enjoy them. 

The Aeschbach factory is very close to Luzern, which is about a 45 minute train ride from Zurich main station. Upon hopping off the train, you can put your google maps away because the smell of chocolate will lead the way. Yaaa, that may be an exaggeration, but the factory is pretty hard to miss. 

We headed upstairs to the ChocoWorld for our self guided tour. There were explanations of the chocolate making process along the way and to keep things interesting, they provided us with chocolate taste tests at almost every stop.

There were big windows along the tour that peered into where the real chocolate making was taking place. A very nice Swiss lady started telling us exactly what was going on down there. You know those cute animal shaped chocolates? 

Well those are hand painted. 

There were other fun things along the tour, like the donkey that gave you a chocolate Swiss coin.

And the artwork completely made out of chocolate. 

And the best part of all was the ChocoPlus option. Not only do you get to enjoy the tour and samples, you get to make your own bar of chocolate! And it’s no skimpy bar of chocolate. They give you 200 grams of pure bliss. Dark, milk, or half and half?

Oh, the toppings! The options were abundant and colorful which would make for a pretty piece of artwork, but I was more worried about taste. The only fruit and chocolate mixture I want is chocolate covered strawberries. Otherwise, keep the fruit away from my chocolate bar. 

So I loaded up on nuts, caramel pieces, more chocolate, and Maldon salt.

On our way out, we found the hidden gem. Not one, but TWO chocolate fountains. Add some corn flakes or rice crisps and call it love…and call the doctor. We were officially sick of chocolate. But it was all worth it. 

Not sick enough to skip the gift shop though. 

One last stop, one last free truffle, and off we went with chocolate bars in hand and melted chocolate on our fingers. 

In my humble opinion, I think the Aeschbach Chocolatier deserves to be included any travel book, because it’s way better than any museum I’ve been to.