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Sweet dreams are made of chocolate sampling tours.

Monday Jan 01, 2007.     By Albrey Nuss

Travel + Tourism Feed

Chocolate and I have a love/hate relationship: I love the way it tastes and I hate that I can't get enough of it. I've had dreams that look like the opening credits of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where chocolate drowns every morsel on the conveyor belt; except in my dreams I'm the candy waiting for its chocolate coating. When I found out that Chicago has a chocolate tour, I had to check it out for myself.

The Chicago Chocolate Tour is a chocoholic's dream come true, but it's more than just a sampling of mouth-watering chocolate treats—although there's plenty of that. The tour also dishes interesting tidbits about the history of chocolate and its production, as well as info about the companies that sell it, all wrapped up in one tasty package.

Sign me up: The winter version of the tour begins in the lobby of the 900 Shops Mall at 1:45 p.m. every Sunday. There's no strict time schedule to follow, which allows time for questions and purchases, but the $35-per-person tour usually runs under two hours. Occasional Saturday tours are also available, and private or special romantic tours (which include a horse and carriage ride) can be arranged in advance.

Sites you'll see: After meeting up with the tour guide and learning some of the chocolate basics (like the properties and qualities of the different varieties), you'll visit six chocolate shops all located within a quarter-mile of each other. Fortunately, the tour ensures that you're exposed to the elements for no longer than two minutes during cold weather, while the warm weather tour takes you to off-the-beaten-path locales.

The first stop on the tour de chocolate is the 900 Shops' Teusher, and from there you'll venture to Elephants Etc. in the Hancock building, Water Tower's Lindt and Godiva shops and wrap up at Hershey's and Ghirardelli. While gathering free goodies, like Teusher's champagne truffle and Elephant Etc.'s handmade chocolate-covered pretzels, you'll also collect a handful of trivia. For example, Lindt discovered its technique for making its chocolate extraordinarily creamy in a fortuitous accident when a chocolatier inadvertently left the automatic mixing machine running overnight.

Golden nugget: Unanimously voted the best part of our tour, we all loved Godiva's generous sample of hot chocolate (made from melted-down Godiva chocolate bars rather than a packaged powder mix).

Who's da guide: Sweet-as-can-be Valerie Beck, the tour's founder, guides most of the outings herself. Her enthusiasm for the sweet stuff is boundless, and she's eager to share her vast knowledge of everything chocolate. In the rare instance that she doesn't know something, the shops' managers are happy to chime in with the details.

Fuel your tank: If the free samples leave you craving more, you can buy treats to take home at any of the shops along the way.

Snooze-fest or eye-opener: The tour is delectably fun and the guide's enthusiasm for chocolate, and sweet treats in general, is highly contagious. Not to mention the inevitable buzz: The members of our tour were soon running around like kids in a candy shop, bright-eyed and giggling, pointing out which treats they used to love when slurping on a ring-shaped sucker was still cool.

Even locals will learn: Fannie Mae isn't the only company making chocolate history in Chicago; for instance, the owner of Elephants Etc. has made the store's chocolate in her own home's kitchen for the past 20 years. Plus, after downing all that cocoa, we felt like royalty when we learned that hot chocolate originated as the drink of the Aztec kings. It is said that Aztec King Montezuma would drink 10 golden goblets of it before visiting his harem; talk about a sugar rush.

Check out http://www.chicagochocolatetours.com/ for more information about Chicago Chocolate Tours.