Swiss Chocolate

in Zurich

Having sailed the ocean blue in 1492, Christopher Columbus noticed how the Mayas used cocoa beans as a currency and a drink, one restricted to high-born males. But it was Cortes, who first saw the potential of chocolate; attracted to cocoa plantations he wanted to grow money on trees so to speak. He brought the first beans to the Spanish court in 1528 reinvigorating all the Kings horses and all the Kings men. Alas the Spaniards found it too bitter so they added their own ingredients to what were primarily a drink and later a medicine, highly nourishing and beneficial. Check. But it was as a drink favoured by the wealthy that chocolate really gained in popularity with the Swiss being introduced to 250 years ago, gaining even greater repute after its ban for fear of its aphrodisiac properties at the hands of its Italian pioneers! Now a fact of life in Switzerland, consuming more per head than anywhere else in the world, even the army is issued with free supplies, conscription anyone? Chocolate for every season, Easter bunnies, chocolate chestnuts in autumn, chocolate flowers in spring, chocolate bears, chocolate covered Christmas, you name it; the Swiss make it out of chocolate. Actually, I wouldn't stand still for too long in Zurich .