Cho-co-latte!

If you LOVE CHOCOLATE, you have come to the right place!

My family and I went to Cailler, a chocolate factory in Gruyere, Switzerland.  At the factory, we learned about the history of chocolate on a tour.  It was fun because in each room they had lights and sound effects to explain the history.  It all started with a god and the Aztecs….

A god gave the cocoa beans to the Aztecs, they ground the cocoa beans into chocolate and added it to water for a drink.  It was said to be a drink that would make you powerful like a god and was given to the warriors before they fought in battle.

Then Hernando Cortes came and took large bags of the cocoa beans and brought them back to Spain!

In Spain, chocolate was only for the rich and powerful people.  It was also discovered that it tastes even better if there was a bit of sugar added to make it sweeter.

The church suddenly banned it because it caused people to do bad things.  Nobody was allowed to have it!

The monks continued to make chocolate and made money for the church.  Luckily, the church said it was fine to have and chocolate was brought back to the people!

Chocolate was enjoyed often and Marie Antoinette even requested a hot chocolate for her last meal before her head was chopped off.

In the 1800’s, Switzerland was the perfect place for Cailler to make a chocolate factory because he had the milk from the cows and lots of space.  He made the factory and in the 1900’s partnered with Nestle.  The company started advertising chocolate on posters and in T.V. commercials.

After the tour, we got to see how chocolate bars are made in the factory.  It was so interesting!

First a worker scoops chocolate and puts it into a machine which comes out in long, thin cylinder shaped pieces on a conveyor belt.

Next, the chocolate is cut and covered in more chocolate!!!

Still on a conveyor belt, they dry quickly, get picked up by a robot and are placed on another conveyor belt.

They are automatically wrapped and fall into a box at the end of the process.

What I thought was amazing is that nobody has to do anything except put chocolate into the machine!

The last room we went into was by far the best!  It was an all you can eat buffet of free chocolate!!!!!!!!!!  The sad part is that there is so much chocolate, you can only eat a bit from every section.  You are not allowed to take chocolate out of the room so you should go and have the chocolate for lunch. (DELICIOUS!)

The factory reminded me of the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, because we could eat as much chocolate as we wanted like all of the characters who won the golden tickets.

I really enjoyed the tour and how it was done with light and sound effects.  The whole process of making the chocolate bars is also very interesting.  My favourite thing of all was the all you can eat buffet of about 14 different types of chocolate.

This chocolate trip was incredible and I would definitely go a second, third, fourth or fifth time.