Xocolatl! or Chocolat or Chocolate as it became known, was brought to Europe by Cortez, by this time the conquistadors had learned to make the drink more palatable to European tastes by mixing the ground roasted beans with sugar and vanilla (a practice still continued today), thus offsetting the spicy bitterness of the brew the Aztec's drank. The first chocolate factories opened in Spain, where the dried fermented beans brought back from the new world by the Spanish treasure fleets were roasted and ground, and by the early 17th century chocolate powder - from which the European version of the drink was made - was being exported to other parts of Europe. The Spanish kept the source of the drink - the beans - a secret for many years, so successfully in fact, that when English buccaneers boarded what they thought was a Spanish 'Treasure Galleon' in 1579, only to find it loaded with what appeared to be 'dried sheep's droppings', they burned the whole ship in frustration. If only they had known, chocolate was so expensive at that time, that it was worth it's weight in Silver (if not Gold), Chocolate was Treasure Indeed! Within a few years, the Cocoa beverage made from the powder produced in Spain had become popular throughout Europe, in the Spanish Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany and - in about 1520 - it arrived in England. The first Chocolate House in England opened in London in 1657 followed rapidly by many others. Like the already well established coffee houses, they were used as clubs where the wealthy and business community met to smoke a clay pipe of tobacco, conduct business and socialise over a cup of chocolate. BACK TO THE AMERICA'S Event's went full circle when English colonists carried chocolate (and coffee) with them to England's colonies in North America. Destined to become the United States of America and Canada, they are now the worlds largest consumers - by far - of both Chocolate and Coffee, consuming over half of the words total production of chocolate alone. |
