Edit 29 January, 2009: Hershey’s announced that they were going to close the Scharffen Berger factory down in West Berkeley, fire their workers, and move production to a plant in Illinois. It looks like they’ve already shut down the factory tour, as a visit to that website just redirects to Hershey’s homepage. Get your California-made Scharffen Berger chocolates while you still can!

As a small kid growing up in America, I only knew two chocolates: Hershey’s and Nestle. Both were milk chocolate, and both were (to me) just okay. Early on, I found that I preferred the Hershey’s “Special Dark” brand of chocolate candy, just because of that slight bitter tang. Ever since then, I’ve always gone for dark chocolate over milk.

Annie is an avowed chocoholic. She introduced me to fine, European-style milk chocolates such as Lindt and Cadbury (the ones that are actually made in Europe, not the American-made ones). Those were good, but I still preferred dark.

Today we went to the Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker factory in Berkeley to take their factory tour. (If you’ve not heard of Scharffen Berger before, they are a very popular maker of “artisanal” chocolates, specializing in dark chocolate.) Unlike the “Willy Wonka” factory, you don’t need to have a golden ticket to get in. Just make a reservation online, and show up 10 minutes before your scheduled start time. It’s totally free!

Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker (Berkeley)

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