Date #27 - The Oompa Loompa Tour

The eating portion of our date project continued with a visit to the Taza Chocolate Factory in Somerville. TH was all on board for this date. He considers himself a chocolate connoisseur, although his taste for chocolate doesn't extend much beyond his Oreo Cookies. I wasn't sure this would qualify as an original date because we have been to Chocolate World in Hershey about 20 times (my brother lives nearby).

However, the Hershey tour is nothing but a disneyesque ride where you never actually see the inside of the factory. At the end of that ride, they give you ONE tiny snack size portion of a Hershey Bar. We are guilty of riding the tour numerous times on one visit, just to get that tease of chocolate at the end. But I can now honestely say that, until our visit to Taza, we had never visited a chocolate factory.

This tour is amazing, and only costs $5. The tour starts and ends of course in the factory store where, amazingly, they provide free samples of all their chocolate. Free UNLIMITED samples. Whoa boy, talk about entering the danger zone:

Because we had arrived about 20 minutes early, we had nothing to do but taste every sample... several times. And then we washed it down with their heavenly hot chocolate. Oh lordy....talk about decadence. And this is nothing like the sweet American or European chocolate we've all grown up on. This is pure organic Mexican style chocolate...heavenly. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and we were instantly addicted and unable to stop.

Finally, it was time to don our hair nets for the tour. Here's TH holding a cocoa pod.

And it was an amazing tour. Taza is one of the few bean-to-bar operations, and they do it in this amazingly tiny space with just a handful of employees. We were able to visit all areas of the production:

Here are the beans imported from Dominican Republic where they are harvested as part of a fair trade agreement with farms that do no employ child or slave labor.

Then they are winnowed and made into chocolate liquid. It's really an amazing process. The name Taza comes from the Spanish word for ''cup'. One of the cofounders lived in Mexico and was taken by the custom of having a cup of hot cocoa every day. It's a great story and you can read all about it on their website.

And along the tour, they continue to offer you chocolate as they explain the different flavors and processes. However, our taste buds were pretty shot at that point and I actually had to refuse several of the samples.

We couldn't enter the actual chocolate making room because it was in production. Here are the real life oompa-loompas at work:

And even the wrapping, packaging, and shipping process is all done by hand with less than a half dozen employees.

When ready to ship, all local deliveries are made by bicycle or vendors can pick the product up at the factory. And shipping is done via eco-friendly methods only. They are serious about sustainability.

Our date ended early on this evening because, once again, we had eaten dessert first and ruined our appetite. All plans to continue on to dinner and drinks were quickly abandoned as we rolled out of the factory, like Augustus Gloop and Violet Beauregard...Shame on us!