Cacao Prieto

Really beautiful space. Would be great for an event. And staff are friendly. Chocolate is better than Raaka (and Mast, obviously), but not as good as commercial chocolate… one day artisans will rule the world, just not yet.

This place is a ripoff. In fairness, the quality of both the chocolate and the whiskey is excellent, but the very unfriendly proprietor egregiously under poured whiskey tasting flights and charged me full price. The staff seems pretentious and has no concern for customer service. Also, the chocolate is ridiculously overpriced.

Really lazy not to update your business hours on Unilocal
ACTUALLY CLOSES @5pm
We got here at 5:10 with a 2 year old and were turned away
Boo !

Good place to visit and take a tour of the chocolate and liquor distilling facilities. I actually think that the chocolate is the highlight of what they produce. The flavors they have are terrific. The whiskies and rum are average.

Only had the experience with ordering from their website. I put my order in about 12noon, got the order the next day! (I live on Long Island, so coming from Brooklyn, it was a close delivery location). Packed in bubble wrap.
I wish they sold milk chocolate. They only sell dark. The chocolate bars were unremarkable considering they cost $ 12 each. I ordered the cashew/​cranberry, and the pistachio/​apricot. Plain chocolate bars with some pieces of the nuts and fruit in it.
I also ordered the soap — $ 20! A little black square piece of soap. I thought maybe it had special ingredients to help my dry skin. Nothing special, and you get black foam everywhere — sink, etc.

Whoooowhee this place stinks, certainly detracting from your ability to taste the chocolate (which is good).

Saw on Cooking Channel living in Dallas now but being born and raised in Brooklyn and having Dominicans friends that I visit here in NY I wanted to check this place out. Cute place what little we saw of it today when we finally got in, had to wait for someone to open doors, times posted are not accurate. When finally someone showed up she was polite but not enthusiastic about the products. I purchased chocolates to take back home but would advise anyone considering coming here that they call and find out the actual hours and take the tours. For us as walk-​ins there was no warm and fuzzies. Been here done that and I don’t need to come back.

I saw this chocolate factory a couple months ago and said I had to come for a tour. I wish I knew though they had no heat! The place was freezing when we were there. We walked in and well we weren’t greeted. We greeted this small snarky young girl that was sipping on something out of cup. We seemed to joke about it the whole time we were there! We bought tickets for the chocolate tour and hung around. It seemed to get a lot of buzz considering there was about 35 — 40 people in our group. They have 2 tours a day on the weekend. I really enjoyed all of the Info. Learning about the owner and how he got started on making chocolate and then making the variety of liquors. We also got samples of the chocolate and then different samples of the liquors. It’s def worth $ 15. The chocolate def has great depth and flavor and the same goes with the liquor. If you plan on buying anything it is a bit pricey. It was very interesting if your are interested going I suggest you go when it’s bit warmer.

I thought it would be an interesting birthday experience to take my bf to a bourbon distillery. Plus, they made chocolate there. So, win-​win.
I contacted management through their website to inquire how to go about reserving a spot for 2 for a tour. We decided to go the walk-​in route, as that is what they offer on the weekend for $ 15 per person. I received a prompt response, and was told that they did not take reservations, to just walk-​in and voila.
Well, when we got there for the 2 pm tour, we were informed by the front desk staff member that because someone called in that day, they would not be offering tours.
I wasn’t rude (I hope), but I admit I did not hide my disappointment very well. Sienna, the only staff member present, was extremely understanding and helpful, and because it was a slow day up to that point, she offered to give us a one-​on-​one tour. I thought this was very gracious of her, as it was not her (or anyone’s fault, really) that her co-​worker called in sick.
Shortly after we started the tour, it got busy (of course) but she made every effort to try and handle our tour and the walk-​ins as personally and professionally as she could. We were grateful, and she really helped to save the day.
As for the distillery/​chocolate factory, it’s small but cozy, and makes for an interesting little tour of some interesting little place out in Red Hook. I won’t give a review of the chocolate or Bourbon. I suggest you go and try it yourself :)

Love the Widow Jane Distillery. Fantastic bourbon. Excellent service (although their email is a little unreliable). Always happy to put a special bottle away for me, whether it was last year’s Bloody Butcher or this year’s cask strength (which I poured and labeled myself). Am always happy to visit.

Tasting chocolate, whiskey and rum on a Saturday afternoon seems like a good way to spend your time.
We stubbled on this spot and diecided hey why not. 1^st thing that caught our attention was the chickens in the back… yes they had chickens walking around in the back. Idk if they’re still there but that was different.
As for the chocolate… it was chocolate. I didn’t have any of the crazy pairings but their regular milk choclate was tasty.
The hightlight was the whiskey and rum with i old had one taste of coffee rum I believe and my chest proceeded to burn from the inside and kill any type of infection lingering in my chest. So yeah… not for me… however for those that I was with they seemed to handle it just fine.

Cool space. Cool idea (alcohol and chocolate). The products? I can only comment on the whiskey and it was nothing special, and very expensive! The whiskey tastes like a pretty average bottle of commercial whiskey — not extra smooth (like the whiskey at king county distillery)
The space itself is really cool. I came here for their second anniversary event last night where they apparently had 10,000 people sign up for tickets (methinks only about 2000 showed up). The line was outrageously long and we ended up waiting in it for an hour before sampling the free goods on offer:
roasted pig, free beer, dominican appetizers (which was caramel popcorn), goats milk ice cream/​duck eggs from kingleche (delicious bourbon flavored). We didn’t get to sample the chocolate nor the mac and cheese and cole slaw.
There was a band and people were able to drink and eat in the streets, which was cool. I don’t think I’d go back for a specific whiskey or chocolate tour though.

The space is really cool, as are the displays of chocolate and whiskey, but this place always seems to have a vibe of being «barely open». It might be that perhaps they have much earlier hours on weekends because every time I’ve come here the place is absolutely empty, except for a couple workers hanging out who look startled to see someone walk in.
The last time I was here was with a group of friends, and we decided to do an entire sample flight of whiskeys, rums, liquors. I can’t attest to being very knowledgeable about the different spirits, but everything we sampled was pretty good and I especially liked the liquor that tasted of coffee. The worker doing the pouring seemed a little annoyed with our large group, but at least she was patient.
Also a fun thing to check out… the little courtyard with complete with roaming chickens.

The best part of this space is… the space. A really cool building, love the enclosed outdoor space with chickens. Although I do think there should be a little more seating than one table. The chocolate I liked, the bourbon, whiskey and rum I loved.
The service like some others noted, is not great. My friends and I went on the tour and our guide was sweet and a little nervous but not a great guide. She rushed, was a little flustered at times, and had no personality with us.
Suggestion: Have the chocolate tasting and the bourbon tasting go together.

I had such a good time tasting the chocolates, whiskey and rum here. The cashiers were very knowledgable about the shop’s history and all of it’s items. We asked so many questions and surprisingly they didn’t get impatient with us. I tasted a whiskey and rum flight and also had a bar of chocolate.
Stopping by really turned the day around.

Wandering around Red Hook, I assumed the sign that said «Chocolate Factory Tour» was some sort of elaborate fat hipster trap… but I went anyway. Roughly on the hour, this distillery (Widow Jane) and chocolate factory offers tours for $ 10. You get a tasting at the end of the tour. Not a bad way to spend a weekend.

This isn’t just a shop, it’s their factory, turning out chocolate bars and whiskey, not a bad combination. Their chocolate is made fresh from organic ingredients, all sourced from a self-​sustainable, family farm in the Dominican Republic. They also offer whiskey and chocolate tours.
Their bars are no joke, weighing in at 4.2oz. I went for the Pecan and Sour Cherry, made with 72% dark chocolate. This bar had the perfect combination of sweetness and bitterness with a deep flavor and excellent texture to the dark chocolate. The sour cherry and whole pecans are really a great fruit and nut pairing and makes for a simple, yet sophisticated sweet treat.

I can’t find this listing on Unilocal,but do try the whiskey tasting here as well. It was $ 10 a person and the tour guide leads a really well informed tour. We also got to try the chocolate.

3.5 stars…
Cacao Prieto is Brooklyn’s very own distillery (whiskey) and chocolate factory. For the most part the two businesses are completely separate but there is some crossover when they use cocoa beans to make a chocolate liquor. They’ve only occupied the space since 2008 so their aged whiskey is actually sent to them in barrels from a partner business and they bottle it in house. The giant still here is a gorgeous work of art into itself but to see them hard at work creating the liquor from an exotic mix of corn is fascinating. When I was there mid-​day/​mid-​week there was only one person there hard at work testing/​tasting the whiskey coming out of the still. She did the best she could double tasking talking to me about the business, showing me the still, and letting me taste any of their liquors. She was generous with the pours and even let me taste some of the unfinished 70% alcohol coming out of the still that she was tasting. It was clear as water, had very little odor to it, tasted sweet, and just touching it to my lips kicked my ass. I’ve heard you have to pay for a tour here but I didn’t pay but then again I’m not sure what I had was officially a tour or not.
On to the chocolate. Unfortunately the whiskey girl had nothing to do with the chocolate so there was little she could tell me other than they get all of the unprocessed raw cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic and do everything in house. They roast the beans upstairs and it seems most of the process happens downstairs including several machines they have developed and sell (patent pending). I wanted a chocolate tour but that wasn’t happening as nothing was going on when I went and no one from that side of the business was around (maybe you should call ahead first).
All the chocolate is 72%, a perfect percentage where it’s not too sweet or to bitter. In addition to the plain chocolate they have a handful of other bars with interesting flavors. My problem with those bars is that they don’t chop up those ingredients (fruits and nuts) and mix them into the chocolate, they just toss them onto the chocolate bar. My other main issue here is the prices. The liquor is expensive and the chocolate is too. It’s about $ 11 for a chocolate bar! Not a giant one, just a regular old size chocolate bar. It was good but nothing much better than Lindt, definitely not worth $ 11. I do appreciate them doing the entire process here though.

I don’t remember which stop this was on the EFF SANDY SUNDAY — Red Hook Style tour, but the chocolate rum was absolutely fabulous. I would not have been aware of this spot had the Red Hook Winery had not been handing out «Brooklyn Spirits Tour» maps. Now I have another mission to accomplish, a full on BK Spirits Tour. Anyhow.
You can smell the chocolate down the block, you have tastes of various chocolate rums and you can attempt to taste gummi bear infused vodka. Which comes in a really cute bottle, and you’ll want to buy it. Howevs, the tasting room girl couldn’t answer a single question about it (what flavor? how much? made here?) so you’ll roll your eyes and drink delicious hot toddys at Fort Defiance.
I’m a Red Hook Rum Runner now!
I made that up!