Chris took a couple of days off work to spend time with the family so we decided to rent a car and explore some places in Austria that are a bit farther out than we normally go. First stop? Zotter Chocolate Factory in Riegersburg! I went years ago with friends and have always wanted to take Chris and the kids there.
The drive was a beautiful two hour drive through the Austrian countryside. It was a bit of dreary weather, but still lovely. The factory is just outside the town of Riegersburg, where there is a castle up on the hill. The castle wasn’t open when we went, so we just enjoyed the view and headed to the factory. The Zotter Chocolate Factory tour is great, because you can stay all day and eat as much chocolate as you want!
Oliver was really excited to see the inside of the factory and all the workers and many machines they have inside. The tour walks you through the process of making the chocolate and lets you taste every step of the process, beginning with the cocoa bean, on to types of sugar, unsweetened chocolate, all the way through the many finished products. We had a good time starting the kids out with the unsweetened chocolate syrup and cocoa beans.
In fact, it may have been the best part of my day! I found it interesting that you could try cocoa beans from different countries, and they all had a very distinct flavor. There were also chocolate bars made of beans from specific countries and they all taste completely different.
Everyone gets a little spoon that you can place or pour chocolate onto and then eat it. The kids thought this was fantastic and all loved being able to try the different flavors. Some of the kids were more adventurous than others in what they tried. Oliver tried everything! James was excited to find that there were real cocoa trees growing in different places in the factory. James doesn’t like chocolate as much as the others, and was better at picking and choosing only the things that interested him most – like the flavors featuring berries.
There is even a station where you can pick a flavor to turn into hot chocolate with a nice glass of steamed milk and a cute little whisk. By the end of the tour we were all feeling a wee bit sick.
There is a really fun computer program that allows you to design your own custom chocolate bar. We let Elora and Oliver design their own bars (which ended up with some interesting combinations of flavors, like raspberry and mint or caramel and rose petals). Then you finish your tour, and go pick up your custom made bar 30 minutes later! So fun, and the kids were so excited to see their creations.
After the factory tour, we headed outside to the Edible Zoo. The Zotter factory has a yummy farm to table restaurant, where you can also enjoy seeing the animals that they raise on the farmland that was inherited from Josef Zotter’s family. The restaurant has really delicious food and an amazing slide. We also loved the cute baby lambs, and there is a graveyard of ideas that shows flavors that are no longer made. Some of them sounded really unappetizing, like Peanuts and Ketchup, or Mustard and Onion.
The grounds of the farm are really fun to wander around and there are several spots that the kids could stop to play. We loved the pigs in their muddy forest enclosure, and also the bouncy playground equipment. After a long wonderful day, James fell asleep almost as soon as we got in the car to head home!
