A Sweet Tour

As most of you already know, we were happy to play hosts to one of our good friends who moved back to Canada just over a year ago and who was here, in Switzerland, visiting for a couple of weeks. She was 'round and about during her stay here visiting old places, and discovering new ones. One of the old places she wanted to visit was the Cailler Chocolate Factory in Broc, a village not too far from where we live. She asked me if i wanted to join her. Huhhh what??? Do i want to go to a place where chocolate is produced and take a tour which includes free sampling of the freshly made product???? Yes, yes, yes, oh yes!



Believe it or not, i had never been there before, even though, like i mentioned above, it is only about a 45min drive from our house, so you can imagine my excitement at her suggestion to take a drive to the factory. The kid inside me was unleashed. We drove to Broc on a gray and damp Tuesday afternoon, well, she drove in her cute little Fiat Panda which she had rented for her stay here. After a year of living away from here and in Canada where the roads are wide and straight for the most part, i have to say she hadn't lost her ability to navigate the narrow, curvy roads of Switzerland. We parked the car at the nearby parking lot and got out. As soon as i opened the car door, a thick, sweet scent drifted up into my olfactory organ. Sensation number one. I swear, the air around the factory is saturated with the smell of chocolate making and it's so intense that it sticks to your clothes right then and there.



We walked inside, where the wonderful, saliva-flow-inducing smell became even stronger, and asked to take the tour. It was a self-guided one, although they do have them with guides in German, French and English, but we were a bit too late getting there, so we were just able to get in and take the last tour. So it was self-guided but that turned out to be a very good thing indeed. The tour included the experience of chocolate making through the four senses: smell, touch, sound and of course, oh god, of course, taste.



The first section dealt with a bit of history, explaining who Monsieurs Cailler and Nestle were and how they came to realize that one can grind up some fine cacao beans, add some fresh milk from the local cows, some equally fresh butter and some sugar, melt it all together, stir it up, then cool it down into various shapes and forms and.....indulge in the sweetest sin ever! I'm not going to go into too much history here and risk boring you all to death, but i'd just like to mention that Fransois-Louis Cailler and Henry Nestle were actually neighbours and that Cailler used liquid milk in his chocolate while Nestle used milk powder and it is still so to this day. I personally prefer the taste of Cailler and now i found out why that could be. Then came the smell experience. You could sample four different smells, the one of milk chocolate, dark chocolate, hazelnut chocolate, and to tell you guys the truth, i forgot the fourth one, silly me. Anyway, i think they want you to smell the chocolate first so you walk around with saliva dripping from the corners of your mouth and the people waking behind you can slip on it and fall down, and that amuses the chocolate makers???well, maybe not.



Second station was touch. There were a few bags full of cacao beans, hazelnuts, almonds, cacao butter and sugar. You could touch all of them. And since no one said you could ONLY touch them, we proceeded to taste them as well. I mean, we were already salivating from the smelling business, who could blame us? Plus, i had never before tasted pure cacao beans so i used this opportunity to do so. I have to say, they tasted like dark chocolate without the sweetness. I liked them....a lot, very cleansing on the palate in between tasting different kinds of chocolate....but i come to that very soon.



Section three was sound and i have to say it was a bit funny. You entered into this tiny room where sound was playing of people eating chocolate. You could hear the paper wrapping and foil being ripped open, then the bar of chocolate being broken into pieces, then you heard chewing and people going "mmmm" (that was the real funny part, i'm chuckling right now just remembering that...should have recorded it). So yeah, we proceeded to the next and most anticipated section of the tour - the taste!



It was a room full of trays upon trays of different sorts of chocolate from Cailler and Nestle and you could sample as many as you liked....or could, lol. So we did. I don't think i have to tell you how absolutely mouthwatering the experience was. I couldn't make up my mind which chocolate i liked better than the other. They were all so fine. My Canadian friend, on the other hand, had a much more sophisticated palate than mine and wrinkled her nose at some of the chocolates while others she liked better. As more people were coming and the trays of chocolate were quickly emptying, the good employees kept bringing more and more out! I ate till i felt sick to my stomach and then we moved on.



On the way out you passed through the store, of course, and i helped myself to some more of the sweet goodness and brought some for my husband of course. My Canadian friend abstained since what she really wanted was to hit the Nestle store where they had not only chocolates but all kinds of other yummy products made by the Nestle company which included pasta and pasta sauce, coffee and hot chocolate, ice cream, cookies, etc, etc, you get the point. She might have needed an extra suitcase for going back home. I, of course, did not miss out on the opportunity to check out the Nestle store and did not come out of there empty-handed either.



Back in the car, it almost tipped over on my side from all the weight. B,thanks for the unforgettable experience which will be repeated over and over again, Allie and Nick don't you worry!



I'm sad to say, B left early this morning for her home in Winnipeg, Canada. B, i miss you tons and look forward already to our next meeting, here or in Canada. Thanks for everything, my friend, and take good care of yourself up in the Great North. See you on Facebook!

P.S. sorry i couldn't post up a pic to this blog. all the pix were taken with my phone, and im not sure why the program cannot upload any of them, but you can see them all on the photo web site and/or facebook