ethel's Chocolate is a sweet treat in Las Vegas
It may have been Forrest Gump who proclaimed that “life is just a box of chocolates” but it is ethel’s Chocolate Factory that is proving just how sweet it can really be.
Located in Henderson, Nevada, just 15 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip, ethel’s has been a Mecca for tourists for the past 25 years. Attracting some 700,000 visitors annually, the world-famous chocolate factory offers a free self-guided factory tour during which guests receive a detailed explanation of the chocolate-making process. The tour concludes in ethel’s chocolate shop where everyone is invited to select a sample of his or her favorite chocolate from a wide array of collections and flavors.
Guests are able to choose between six unique chocolate collections: Nut & Caramel, Cocktail, Fruit, Truffles, American Pop, and ethel’s latest line, an authentic Artisan Collection featuring five new chocolate blends. In addition, there are also special seasonal collections. Each piece of ethel’s chocolate is homemade at ethel’s Chocolate Factory in Henderson and contains no preservatives
Featured in the new Artisan Collection are five 85 gram bars with cacao percentages ranging from 55-70%. The unique combination of flavors spans from Venezuelan/Trinidad Black, an intense chocolate with a French aroma and notes of red fruits, strawberries and raspberries, to Red Vanilla, which blends an array of ingredients to form a complex earthy undertone, to Exotic Caramels and Artisian Truffles with ganache-filled centers.
At ethel’s, visitors also have an opportunity to explore the three-acre Botanical Cactus Garden on the grounds. Right outside the doors of the chocolate shop, guests will discover more than 300 species of plants that highlight the beauty of the area. Half of the plants in the garden are cacti and succulents largely native to the American Southwest, and the rest are desert trees and shrubs from the Southwest United States, Australia and South America.
Chosen for the beauty of their floral displays, all of the plants are adaptable to the climate of Southern Nevada. Also featured in the garden is a variety of desert rocks, including Utah Bali Hai “chocolate” and Arizona moss rock from the Grand Canyon region. ethel’s also has one of the world’s largest collections of Southwestern desert plants such as the Teddy Bear Cholla and Organ Pipe cactus. For the Christmas holidays, the garden is turned into a winter wonderland boasting some 500,000 lights.
Manufactured and sold by the Mars Retail Group, ethel’s Chocolate has eight shops in the Las VegasValley. It all goes to show that sometimes it’s good to think INSIDE the box.
- by Bobbie Katz, Las Vegas Reporter for HelloMetro
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