Chocolate Manufactory Tasting Journey at York Cocoa Works

I visited here with my husband for a mid-week trip. Neither of us had been before. There is no dedicated parking but it is in the centre of York and walkable from all areas. We wanted to do one of the two chocolate tours we found in York. We chose this one as we had bought a York Pass and this one was included in the price. We were asked to wait outside until the tour began. It was a nice day and this was fine with us. There was around 12 people on our tour which was just the right number as I think any more would struggle to hear when on the outdoor part of the tour. The tour guide was a young male who said it was his first one and he told us he was a bit nervous which was sweet. You start the tour outside, looking in the windows at the side of the building. The guide talked us through about sourcing the beans and bringing them over to the UK. You could see in to the sorting room from outside and we were both amazed to find that each bean (yep, EVERY. SINGLE. ONE) is hand checked and sorted. Now THAT requires some patience! We were then walked around to the front of the building and the guide talked us through the process of making chocolate. After that talk (which took around 15-20 minutes), we were taken in to the building and sat down at a long table. We were shown ingredients that go in to the chocolate and could see in to the moulding and tempering room and the two members of staff in there preparing the chocolates. Each person had some cocoa nibs and a handful of different chocolate squares to try. We were talked through each one and had a fun guess at what the flavours were in each one (which are naturally flavoured from the beans and their growing surroundings and have no added flavourings at all). The young man who took the tour was very good an if he hadn't have said anything, we wouldn't have known that this was his first tour. He didn't know the answer to a couple of questions but these are things that he'll learn as the weeks go by and we weren't remotely fussed about this as the lady asking the questions was quite clearly only asking those things to try and sound clever anyway! One of the other ladies on the tour had a very chesty cough and coughed and coughed throughout the whole thing. Non-stop. This would be disgusting (and quite rude, I think, that she didn't step away until her coughing fit was over) even before COVID but when you throw COVID in to the mix it is dreadful. Why she thought that sitting in a room with food in front of you was a suitable activity with a cough like that, who knows?! We really enjoyed the activity and would recommend it to everyone. It's not long, perhaps an hour or so. But it was short enough that we didn't get bored and long enough that we felt we learned some new things. You get 10% discount in the shop after the tour. We did the tour in the morning and were walking around all day seeing York in hot weather so the guide said we could go back later in the day and could still get the discount. Sadly, we completely forgot so missed out on some of their chocolate. The chocolate itself is great. I do not like dark chocolate as a rule. Not the cheap stuff nor the more expensive brands. But I was very surprised that my favourite taster was the highest percent cocoa content! On return to York, I would like to go to the cafe and have a hot chocolate. This is an activity I would definitely do again.

Expensive, boring and the chocolate wasn’t even good. They made us stand in the rain whilst they talked about a machine in the window, when we finally went inside they talked again about machines in the window and then when we sat down talked about chocolate for about 10 minutes and then gave us these chocolate nibbles, then talked for like 5 min and then gave us 5 tiny bits of chocolate that wasn’t that good. That was the first end.

Very informative visit learned lots of very interesting facts would definitely recommend , obviously for adults not children the chocolate is really good quality and amazing taste and I don’t normally like dark chocolate