Sadly, there were no Oompa-Loompas.

Last spring, I wrote about my encounter with a 99%-cocoa Lindt chocolate bar, piece that enjoyed strong popularity on Reddit and Digg. Today, I decided to once again expand my chocolate knowledge by visiting… a chocolate factory!

There are several chocolatiers in the Bay area, including Ghirardelli of the eponymous Ghirardelli Square, but I could find only one that offered factory tours: Scharffen Berger.

Scharffen Berger was founded just over a decade ago and has its primary factory in Berkeley, California. I was surprised by the size of the building: quite small, maybe 50 m by 25 m. Its brick construction served well to conceal the treasure within.

The tour began with a discussion of cacao, chocolate, and the genesis of Scharffen Berger. Three-sentence summary: Cacao beans, initially surrounded by a sweet fruit flesh, are repeatedly heated and crushed to eventually become chocolate. Scharffen Berger started when a guy took a vacation in France, was smitten with some chocolate, and decided to pursue a career change away from medicine. Scharffen Berger was one of the first to bring high-cocoa-content dark chocolate to the American consumer, and they did so by handling everything from importing the beans to molding the bars. Delectable chocolate samplings punctuated the talk.

With the classroom out of the way, we went to the production floor.  Machines were crushing the cacao beans, tempering chocolate, and filling molds. This machine smelled delicious:

All along the walls were pallets of raw ingredients and finished products:

Like I mentioned, there were no Oompa-Loompas, but the people in this room seemed abnormally short:

The factory tour was a bit underwhelming. The factory was so small that I was left thinking, “That’s it?” On the other hand, the staff was friendly, and I learned some things about chocolate. It was a decent experience.