http://www.goufrais.com/swiss/deutsch.htm
First sampled at the Zurich Congresshaus wine tasting gourmese (sic) event every year, just finished on Monday.
I now go back every year mainly to stock up on this.
Best choc in world is clearly this:
I don't know if they still have it, but for years the first ad you saw getting off the Ferry at Dover was for Cadbury's, welcoming visitors back to the UK.
Most milk chocolate tastes like flavoured sugar to me, would be nice with a lot less sugar. I do like lindt 90%. However, my faaavourite is 70% but with milk in it - still that mighty hit of chocolate but the milk counters the bitterness of the chocolate and there's very little sugar - gorgeous stuff:
If you want to know how the Swiss chocolate is made I recently found out that the Lindt Factory in Zürich is offering Chocolate Cooking classes!!! Great fun!
I enjoy the occasional Ritter chocolate as well. Especially good is the packaging, just snap it in half and the packaging opens up.
I also like to say after eating their 100g bar that "I have taken some sport today"
back onto the debate: it really depends what you ate as a teenager, then after being here a few years the original longing for Cadburys wears off, and after searching around you can find some excellent stuff. Coop sell their own brand, a dark 70% chocolate which is truly tasty and simple (Not the Prix Garantie label). I agree that the small artisan chocolate makers in Switzerland produce truly amazing flavours.
In the 19th and early-20th centuries the following chocolate factories were founded:
1819 - Cailler in Vevey (today Nestlé ) 1826 - Suchard in Serrières (today Kraft Foods ) 1830 - Kohler in Lausanne (today Nestlé) 1836 - Sprüngli in Zurich, company split into Confiserie Sprüngli and Lindt & Sprüngli in 1892 1852 - Maestrani in Luzern (today in Flawil ) 1862 - Klaus in Le Locle 1867 - Peter in Lausanne (today Nestlé) 1879 - Lindt in Bern (today Lindt & Sprüngli) 1887 - Frey in Aarau (today Migros ) 1899 - Tobler in Bern (today Kraft Foods) 1901 - Chocolat de Villars in Villars sur Glâne 1928 - Stella SA in Lugano (1987 Giubiasco) 1929 - Camille Bloch in Courtelary 1932 - Teuscher in a small town in the Swiss Alps 1932 - Bernrain in Kreuzlingen 1933 - Chocolats Halba in Wallisellen I hope you have all visited a chocolate factory, at least once! My favourite is http://www.cailler.ch/en/maison-cail...n/information/
opening times: http://www.cailler.ch/en/maison-cailler/visit-us/opening-hours/
Certainly the Swiss do eat their share of chocolate, but the figures for internal consumption are distorted by the number of tourists buying chocolate here and taking it back home.
Another useless fact: an Italian man invented the Conching smoothing process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conching Wikipaedia says it was Lindt but Cailler stated in their old exhibition that he "borrowed" the idea from an Italian man he met in an exhibition in Turin.
Nobody mentioned Frigor?
They in the late 1950ies handed out "rest-pieces" to schoolboys from the area. but most regrettably stopped this nice tradition in about 1960
but you even in the 60ies could get "samples" free of charge
Let's add ALPROSE of 1957
in Caslano near Lugano
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Frigor is CAILLER !
There is no "best chocolate" as it is vey relative to what you are accustomed too.
Chocolate is very much a "comfort food" and usualy given at a young age and therefore, for each and everyone of us, the best chocolate is the one we grew up with. I for one am not particularly keen on Hershey bars (i'll eat them if there's nothing else ) but for an American who started eating them a 2 or 3 years old, they are probably better than sliced bread !
COOP make a pretty fabulous BIO dark chocolate with almonds, and one with salted pistachio.
I wish I could say I liked Sprüngli more. Their house chocolate is OK. And their chocolate and orange cake is decadent. But just about everything else I've bought from them has been sadly disappointing: fruit pies, almond cake, etc. The crust or pastry tastes as though it's made with lard.
Cadbury's and Hershey are not "chocolate". They are "confection".
And Hershey bars struggle to even qualify as edible confectionary
I remember that we, my brother and me, with grandmum were in the Randen forest on the German border, and Grandmum gave a piece of choc whenever we detecfed a border stone of either side. Of the German border stones there were some still of the Grossherzogtum Baden, some of the Deutsches Reich (German Empire) and a few already of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
Whatever the legal definitions, the UK Cadbury's is much better than the US version.
It must be just upbringing, I guess, but as I think I said earlier in this discussion, a lot of us find the 70+ percent varieties you get more commonly here just too bitter and brittle. I can certainly eat it and enjoy it but given the choice I prefer the softer creamier style you get in the UK and elsewhere. If that's "confection", fair enough, but I like it.
The kids from the area often stop by at the factory still today. They come into the building, go directly to the reception desk and take free chocolates from a big jar. Then they simply go out of the building and continue their way home/ to the school.