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It’s fair to say that I like chocolate and travel, so I try to combine my two passions as often as I can; I’ve planted cacao plants in St Lucia, made my own chocolate in Costa Rica, visited a chocolate factory in Puglia, attended a chocolate-making workshop in Belgium and I’ve even indulged in an all over chocolate body massage in the UK. As a result, I’ve tried A LOT of chocolate. I think this gives me ample qualification to proclaim that the best chocolate I have tasted anywhere in the world, can be found in… drum roll please… Vienna.
Not only is it the most mouth-wateringly delicious chocolate I have ever had, it’s responsibly sourced and sustainably made too. So if you can overlook the high-calorie intake (and who cares when it tastes this good?), eating Zotter Chocolate is a 100% guilt-free foodie experience.
Thank God for Patrick and Wolfy from Urban Adventures, who introduced me to this sublime pleasure when I joined their fabulous Good Evening Vienna! Walking Tour.
Zotter is a multi-award winning bean-to-bar Chocolatier, founded in Austria in the late 1980s by the Zotter family. Zotter is known for producing high-quality chocolate with sometimes quirky, always spell-binding flavour combinations. Their poppyseed-cinnamon, pumpkin brittle with marzipan and champagne and grilled walnuts with marzipan chocolate combos have won them fans all over Austria. In 2015 Zotter made the Top 25 Chocolatiers in the World List which taste-tested 4,000 products from 550 brands in 70 countries. I wonder how you get a job as a chocolate taster for those awards? It must surely be a contender for World’s Best Occupation Award.
Zotter is Fair Trade verified but they have gone one step further than that, introducing their own FAIR principles to give customers the absolute assurance that they pay more than the world market price for beans and in doing so effectively support local farmers, buying from them. Happily, this means their products contain 100% fairly traded, high-quality ingredients. Their chocolate is also produced sustainably in a state of the art the factory that runs on eco-power generated from cocoa bean shells. How cool is that?!
As we strolled through Vienna’s vibrant Nashmarkt and after trying some flavoured vinegars to cleanse our palate, we headed for our ‘chocolate stop.’ We were greeted like old friends, invited to taste anything we liked in the store. I had told Wolfy earlier in the tour that I love Slovenian pumpkin seed oil, something I’d discovered recently on a trip to Lake Bled. He recommended I try Zotter’s pumpkin seed chocolate and thank God he did. It was truly sensational. You know that elusive feeling when you have chocolate that’s truly sublime in your mouth and instead of chewing it, you let it melt just so that you can savour it for a little longer? That’s the kind of decadent eating habits Zotter’s scrumptious creations will inspire in you.
Wolfy & Patrick waited patiently as the entire group (there were 9 of us in total) bought multiple bars of chocolate, claiming that they were for friends and relatives but I suspect that they would end up in their own stomachs because the chocolate is that good. Our tour continued to some of the city’s trendiest neighbourhoods where we picked up insider information on the best places to eat, drink and be merry in Vienna. I tried one of the best goulashes of my life on this tour as well, (I know, now I’m just being greedy) but that’s a story for another blog post…
With the sweet taste of Zotter and several glugs of Grüner Veltliner still fresh in my mouth, we said goodbye to Patrick and Wolfy, professing our undying love for them, all because they introduced us to the world’s best chocolate (well, technically it came eighth but it will always be first in our hearts) and shared their dazzling city with us, one sunny June evening. Unforgettable.