Chocoholic Tours (by invitation) by Bureaucrat

Newsflash! As part of the new Winter Warmer Chocoholic Tour, there is a special offer. Receive 10% off your first tour.  Just quote BLOG2015 when booking.  

Chocolate coma (definition) is the state of being in a torpor induced by too much chocolate. Thanks to Chocoholic Tours, the Lawyer and I (plus our fellow chocoholics) are still recovering from a delicious and oh-so-decadent chocolate tour.  While I love handcrafted chocolate, it'll be a while before I eat any more as, it turns out, you can have too much of a very, very good thing.

Chocoholic Tours, as the name suggests, takes you on a walking tour to some of the best chocolateries in the city.  On our Bittersweet Tour, we sampled our way across five chocolate shops. With bubbly Jess as our guide, we started off at Cacao Lab.  Here we got to sample these silky, chocolatey hot chocolates - we chose chilli chocolate and mint chocolate.

We followed this with these shiny domes of passion fruit pralines.

Inside Cacao Lab with Jess.  In addition to chocolate, there is a range of chocolate eclairs, including frozen eclairs that you can customise the flavours.

Next stop was Alison Nelson's Chocolate Bar, which originated from New York.  

Located in the Emporium, it's a gorgeous cafe where you can indulge your sweet tooth.

A lovely, creamy shot of milkshake, lavender praline and a peanut and butter praline were on the menu here.  While this may not seem to be a lot of chocolate, believe me, some of us were starting to feel very full.  These fine chocolate houses certainly do not skimp on the cocoa butter!

Waddling along, we made our way to Koko Black, located in the opulent Royal Arcade. 

Chef Vincent talked us through is stringent and scientific methods in making their delicious chocolates.  Koko Black makes up to 20,000 pieces of chocolate each week!  It was amazing that a small difference in temperature can 'ruin' handcrafted chocolates (although, all of us on the tour did not think any of the 'ruined' chocolates tasted any different to the 'perfect' chocolates that are on sale).

I forget which flavour was which, but we tried a raspberry chocolate...

...and a cherry liqueur with vanilla filling.  

Haigh's Chocolate started out in Adelaide.  Renowned for their chocolate frogs, they also have a range of chocolate animals - Haigh's supports a number of environment/animal conservation causes.

We got to try a milk and dark pastilles and also a very chewy and yummy almond nougat chocolate.

Our final stop was at Ganache Chocolate for afternoon tea. Thankfully, there were no more chocolates to try but instead cake and a drink were waiting for us.

Our relief from chocolate was short-lived as we were each presented with a full serve of hazelnut mousse cake.  A gorgeously smooth and rich hazelnut mousse.  But the base of the cake was the best - crunchy, light and crispy it was delicious and fun to eat.  Luckily, if you can't finish your cake, you're allowed to take it home with you (which is what we did).  Having said that, there were a few people who heroically finished their cake!

I got a cup of tea while the Lawyer opted for an iced chocolate.  It was amusing to note that some of our fellow chocoholics were ordering their drinks with skimmed milk - frankly, it seemed like closing the stable door after the horse had bolted! 

Last but not least, we got to try an Australian-first: Australian grown cacao beans made into chocolate.  Grown in the Daintree in Queensland, these are the only cacao plantation in Australia. The chocolates are manufactured in Victoria and will shortly be available for sale.

Overall

If you want to feel like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, definitely book yourself in for a Chocoholic Tour.  There's several tours to choose from and they last about 2.5 hours.  The tours are interesting as you'll learn more about chocolate and also about Melbourne.  During the tour, as you visit the various places, you get discounts and other offers.