Chocolate Zoom Kick-Starts Its Chocolate Tours

New York, NY, August 01, 2006 --(PR.com)-- Chocolate Zoom, the monthly online magazine for worldly chocoholics, is launching the New York Chocolate Tours this August. Its ambition is to inform, delight and reveal to the chocolate lovers some of the most sophisticated and creative chocolate shops in the city. Whether they are local stores or branches of international brands, these shops sell some of the best flavors and most imaginative bonbons. The tours will take place every Saturday and they will leave from 484Broome Street (in front of Mariebelle) at 1pm sharp, lasting about three and a half hours. After visiting three stores in Soho, the hippest part of New York City, the groups will go see five extraordinary confectionery hubs on the Upper East Side, arguably the most posh part of Manhattan.

Only in the last decade has chocolate truly been discovered, appreciated and resurrected to a higher status than a simple sugar fix. New York, as the cosmopolitan, trendy city that it is, saw a dramatic increase in chocolatier per square mile in the past ten years. Well-known European brands flocked to open outposts here in the center off all things modern and Americans that caught the virus of the cacao bean trained abroad and brought back their knowledge in creating successful businesses.

But in a city so big, how do you discover the crème de la crème of Gothamist’s chocolate masters by yourself, how do you know which reviews to believe and how do you organize your itinerary if you’re in the city for a limited amount of time or if you’re a native always on the run? There’s nothing easier. Let someone else do it for you with professionalism and you’ll be introduced to a world of finesse and delightful taste without lifting a finger. Well, you’ll have to walk a lot, but you know what they say, “no pain, no gain.” And let’s face it: a bit of mileage is not all that bad as you will burn out the calories ingested in the stores where there are plenty of samples waiting for you.

Pierre Marcolini, a Belgian company that is part of the tour, started out in 1995 with one workshop in a small town and gradually opened branches in Brussels, Japan, France, London and it finally acknowledged that New York was ready for it in 2004. The manager of the NY shop, Julia J. Collins, likes the idea of a New York Chocolate Tour, “I think it’s a great idea to bring a small group of people to a few select shops and tell them about the history of the place, about the techniques, the ingredients and make them realize that high quality chocolate is a different class and it’s worth pursuing.”

Michel Richart, a French master chocolatier and the founder of RichArt Paris, was more than intrigued by the idea when he was first contacted by Chocolate Zoom for an interview. He actually offered to lead a tour himself and take the choco-tourists around when he visits New York. The other stores that have embraced the initiative of this connoisseur tour are MarieBelle, Vosges, Kee’s Chocolates, Debauve & Gallet, La Maison du Chocolat and Martine’s Chocolates.

Carmen Botez, the founder of the magazine, is thrilled that the tour is finally taking shape, “I always wondered what it would be like to have free reign in a first-class chocolate shop and be able to taste before buying and be told about the particulars of a chocolate before tasting it. When I started the magazine (www.chocolatezoom.com), I wanted to discover the best chocolate makers and bring them as they are to the people and have people understand more about this craft. There’s a new breed of consumers out there and they’re all about high-quality chocolate, whether it’s olive oil in chocolate shells, pineapple flavored bonbons or ganache infused with wasabi or cayenne. People have very hectic lives nowadays and they don’t have time to do proper research, so we’re doing that for them and we make all the arrangements and we tell them the story. Just give us about three hours of your life and we’ll change it.”

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For further information, please contact Cristina Jaleru at cristina@chocolatezoom.com or by phone at +1 207 344 9284. Chocolate Zoom is published by Zoom Media & Productions.