Today, as an extension of Mary’s birthday, since she had not had a chance to celebrate it with her family yet, we went to the Scharffen Berger factory in Berkeley. Joining us were Mary’s mom, dad and brother. We had a 10:30 AM appointment for Scharffen Berger’s factory tour.

If you are not familiar with Scharffen Berger, and you like dark chocolate, you should really check them out. The company was started by Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger in 1996. Robert was a family physician, who was exploring new interest after a run-in with Leukemia. John had been an organic grower and wine maker, with a successful sparkling wine label, Scharffenberger Cellars, which he had sold in 1995. Together they started making chocolate in Robert’s kitchen using a toaster oven, coffee grinder, mortar and pestle, an electric mixer. They eventually opened a factory in South San Francisco, making chocolate with vintage European machinery and selling it locally. Eventually they moved to the larger facility in Berkeley. [Sources: Factory tour and Scharffen Berger — Our History]

The tour started with a brief history of the company similar to the previous paragraph. The guide also mentioned that Scharffen Berger was acquired by Hershey in 2005, and was not part of Hershey’s Artisan Confections Company (which also includes Joseph Schmidt Confections and Dagoba Organic Chocolate). To many, this may seem like a total sell-out, and in fact I have seen articles suggesting it is (see Hershey’s “White Sheep” Brand–Scharffen Berger on BusinessWeek). However, as pointed out in the tour, the Scharffen Berger operations are quite independent, and they still make chocolate the same way they have for the past decade, but now they have more money for expansion and greater distribution.

In any case, the tour was great. In addition to the company history, we learned all about the cacao plant, it’s history and variations, and how it is used to make chocolate. During this discussion, we had the chance to sample their 3 main chocolates: 70% Cacao Bittersweet, 62% Cacao Semi Sweet and 41% Cacao Rick Milk Chocolate. We also got to try some cacao nibs, which are simply cleaned, roasted, and lightly crushed cacao beans. We took a tour of the factory, though being Sunday, nothing was actually running. It was still pretty interesting to see the equipment, which is rather quaint compared to the bulk chocolate manufacturing facilities. The tour ended in the store, where we had an opportunity to sample a few more varieties, including Nibby (with cacao nibs), Mocha (with Sumatran coffee beans), and Milk Sea Salt Almond. There were also samples of their hot chocolate and ganache. As an added bonus, we got to wear some really stylish hairnets.

After the tour, we had lunch in their cafe, Cafe Cacao. They have a variety of breakfast and lunch dishes. The food was good. I had a ham omelette and we all shared some yummy sweet potato fries. Mary had a pork sandwich which was pretty good, but nothing special. After lunch we went back to the Scharffen Berger store to pick up a few items to try later. We even got a Dagoba chocolate bar with dark chocolate (74%) chiles and nibs in it. That should be interesting…