Listen to Story It all goes back to the word 'conche'. Verb, conching. The process of conching was a well-kept secret in the valleys of Switzerland long before they made their way to the world in the form of those melt-in-the-mouth chocolate bars.
Rodolphe Lindt kept 'conching' to himself for 20 years. In 1899, he sold it to another man - chocolate manufacturer Johann Rudolf Sprungli-Schifferli. Once you're done pronouncing that tongue-twister of a name, here's the story of the chocolate we cannot do without.
Cocoa is the starting point of this story. The history of chocolate dates back to the 4th millennium BC, when deep in the Ecuadorian rainforests, the aboriginal people had already let themselves be enamoured by the bean. Then, in Mexico in the 2nd millennium BC, the word 'kakawa' gained prominence.
The Aztecs loved their spicy drink called 'Xocolatl'. But as it is with prized and priced possessions in the rest of the world, till Europe 'discovers' something, the world remains oblivious of it. Where did chocolate come from? Photo: Lindt Home of Chocolate So, cut to 1528, when conquistador Hernan Cortes took cocoa with him to Europe.
By 1544, chocolate had made its way to the Spanish court and began to be enjoyed as a drink. A few hundred years later, the cocoa tree was bestowed with a name by natural scientist Carl von Linne, 'Theobroma Cacao L.'.
Theobroma, or food of the gods in Greek. There has been no looking back for this heavenly concoction since then. Switzerland w.
