For a different perspective on Swiss chocolate-making, focused on small bean-to-bar producers working directly with cocoa bean farmers, Detours Zürich offers an “Ethical Chocolate Tour.” I attended this tour, organized in partnership with the Good Chocolate Hub, during the inaugural edition of Climate Week Zürich. Not only did we get to taste delicious chocolate, but we also learned about efforts to produce chocolate more responsibly.

Learn About and Taste Ethical Chocolate

What is ethical chocolate? For the Detours Zürich tour, ethical chocolate comes from artisanal, bean-to-bar chocolate-makers that help to ensure fairness and sustainability throughout the production process. More specifically, the production of this chocolate does not involve child labor or unfair wages. It also strives to reduce or eliminate negative environmental impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions, harmful pesticides or deforestation.

The Ethical Chocolate Tour offered by Detours Zürich aims to teach participants about the production process, from harvesting of cocoa beans to the packaging of chocolate bars in Zürich.

Our tour began with an interactive workshop and tasting at Gebana, a company specializing in fair trade and sustainable food production, including chocolate. We tasted and analyzed the flavor profiles of three different chocolates. One of the chocolates surprised us all. It turned out to be dark chocolate, even though we were sure it contained milk!

We then moved on to La Flor, a single-origin chocolate maker, walking through the process of making a chocolate bar from start to finish. They showed us how the beans are roasted and processed in small-batches, ground and conched into a smooth creamy chocolate and then formed into bars.

At the end of the tour, you’ll leave with a greater appreciation of the time and energy that goes into making chocolate and a better understanding of how to buy chocolate more consciously.

Ethical Chocolate Tour details:

• Cost: CHF 85, per person (not including the fare for a short bus ride during the tour)
• Duration: 3 hours
• Meeting point: Gebana’s shop, about a 5-minute walk from the Zürich’s main train station
• Language: English, as well as German (on request)

About Detours Zürich

Diana Fischer, founder of Detours Zürich, started this tour company in 2020. Her goal is to offer “purpose-driven experiences” that have a positive impact on the local community. In addition to the Ethical Chocolate Tour, it offers tours about urban foraging, underground mushrooms and more, as well as hand-on workshops, such as its Bean-to-Bar Chocolate Course.

Detours Zürich
Marchwartstrasse 25, 8038 Zürich
+41 (0)76 237 5042
contact@detours-zurich.ch
detours-zurich.ch

Full disclosure: I attended the Ethical Chocolate Tour as a guest of Detours Zürich. The thoughts and opinions expressed in this article, as always, are purely my own.