Heinrich Escher, mayor of Zürich, was introduced to chocolate in Brussels in 1697 and brought it back home, where it was discreetly consumed at the feasts of the various guilds which ruled the city, until the Zürich Council banned it in 1722 as unfit for virtuous citizens (as it had a reputation as an aphrodisiac). Chocolate manufacture didn’t begin in Switzerland for well over another 100 years. In the 18th century, Italy became a center of confectionery and chocolate-making, drawing practitioners from around Europe. Many ‘cioccolatieri’ (chocolatier) from the Ticino (Val Blenio) and the Grisons who had learned their trade in Turin, Milan and Venice left home to work abroad, founding strongly family-oriented manufacturing businesses in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Strasbourg, Nice, Paris, London, St. Petersburg, Copenhagen and elsewhere. Their know-how flowed back to Switzerland’s chocolate pioneers, who gradually began to establish factories and shops. The first chocolate shop in Switzerland opened in Bern in 1792 and from these beginnings Switzerland turned into the Number One chocolate nation by the early 20th Century.
One of these pioneers was François-Louis Cailler (1796- 1852) from Vevey. He learned his craft in Turin. Upon his return to Switzerland, he opened a mechanized chocolate factory in Corsier-sur-Vevey in 1819. Although commercial success was a long time in coming, the young Cailler created the basis for industrial-scale production (the rotary grater for cocoa beans) and offered sixteen different sorts of chocolate with a variety of additional ingredients, including cinnamon and vanilla. Jacques Foulquier (1799-1865) began manually producing chocolate in Geneva in 1826. His son-in-law and successor, Jean-Samuel Favarger, gave the brand that is still famous today its name. Demand grew, and by 1832 the canton of Vaud alone boasted some 32 manual chocolate-making businesses. The first steamships began operating, bringing yet more consumers. Tourism flourished. During the reign of Queen Victoria, the horror stories that Lord Byron, the poet Percy Bisch Shelley and his wife Mary (the author of ‘Frankenstein’) who wrote on Lake Geneva in 1816 attracted the first English tourists.
Having trained as a confectioner under his brother in Bern, Philippe Suchard (1797-1884) from Boudry in the canton of Neuchâtel traveled to the United States in 1824, where he met many Swiss émigrés. In 1826, back in Neuchâtel, he opened a chocolate factory that became famous far beyond the country’s borders. But the pioneering spirit that drove Philippe Suchard was not confined solely to chocolate. It was he who introduced steamships to Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Thun. He was also interested in shipping along the River Rhine, traded in silk and macaroni, and was even involved in iron-ore mining in the US. A look at the industry in 1883 shows that Suchard accounted for 50% of the chocolate produced in Switzerland.
In 1831, Charles Amédée Kohler (1790-1874), a wholesale grocer who also sold cocoa, decided it made more sense to open his own chocolate factory than to continue supplying confectioners with the raw material. Just like Cailler and Suchard, he constantly sought to refine the existing range of chocolates. His most important creation was nut chocolate. The family-run firm trained several famous apprentices, including Rudolf Lindt (in 1872-1875) and Robert Frey (1880-1883). Daniel Peter (1836-1919), a son-in-law of F.-L. Cailler and a close friend of Henri Nestlé, founded the Peter-Cailler company in 1867. In 1875, he succeeded in mixing cocoa paste with condensed milk, thereby creating the world’s first milk chocolate, which he dubbed ‘Gala Peter’.
The result was so successful that the entire industry switched to this production method from 1880 onwards. Daniel Peter therefore played a pivotal role in helping Swiss chocolate reach the supremacy it enjoys today. Although chemist and pharmacist Henri Nestlé (1814-1890) did not produce chocolate himself, his company was responsible for the global marketing of Peter’s milk chocolate from 1904.
The first chocolate factory in German-speaking Switzerland opened in 1845. Inspired by the experiments of Cailler and Suchard, Rudolf Sprüngli-Amman (1816- 1897) developed a manufacturing process that enabled him to refine chocolate. Aquilino Maestrani (1814-1880) was the most important figure in chocolate-making in eastern Switzerland. Like his father, a chocolatier from Lugano, Maestrani spent time in Lombardy (Milan) and later Nuremberg learning the fine art of chocolate manufacturing. In 1850, he opened a factory in Lucerne, which he then moved to St.Gallen in 1859. In 1874 another factory was established by Johann Georg Munz in Flawil.
Rudolf Lindt (1855-1909) opened a chocolate factory in Bern in 1879. A born tinkerer, Lindt constantly improved his mixing and grating machines until he had developed a method for producing a soft-melting chocolate, which he called ‘chocolat surfin’. It was the first chocolate that melted in the mouth, and signalled the birth of modern chocolate. Also in Bern, Jean Tobler (1830-1905) ran a confectionery shop in which he sold his own specialities alongside chocolate made by producers like Lindt. In 1899, he founded the Tobler chocolate factory. We have his son Theodor to thank for inventing Toblerone in his basement in 1908. Today, the distinctive Toberlone bars are the most famous of all Swiss chocolates in the world.
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The years 1890-1920 were the heyday of Switzerland’s chocolate industry, as it earned a reputation far beyond the country’s borders. Tourism was booming, and members of the international high society, who spent their holidays in Switzerland, became the world’s ambassadors for Swiss chocolate. Rudolf Lindt, for example, aimed his advertising at exclusive girls’ finishing schools in western Switzerland, where Europe’s crème de la crème gathered. This was an era of phenomenal growth rates. From 1888 to 1910, the number of chocolate producers rose from 13 to 23, and the number of people employed by the industry jumped from 528 to 5547. Whereas about 13 tonnes of chocolate were produced in 1905, this had already risen to 40,000 tonnes (three-quarters of which was exported) by 1918. Switzerland thus became something of a chocolate superpower, and by 1912 it had cornered 55% of the world’s chocolate export market.
Export figures fell during the Depression years of the 1920s and 1930s, and it was only after the end of the Second World War that the Swiss chocolate industry recovered and took off again. In the 1950s, sales were still at around 26,000 tonnes, compared with 170,000 tonnes today, representing a turnover of 1.7 billion Swiss francs. International competition forced the Swiss chocolate industry to streamline its production while at the same time sticking to and further improving the tried-and tested recipes on which Swiss chocolate had built its excellent reputation. After all, why change a winning formula?
The Swiss consume a little over 2 pounds of Chocolate a month or 25 pounds a year. Maybe that is why they live longer.
Thanks to the people at the Swiss Club in Vancouver, B.C., Canada for providing the basis for this post.
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Armani used his own design team for the project. This part of the house is a converted barn. 
The house was nicknamed the “Polar Bear House” by its previous owner and coincidentially, Armani was gifted that stuffed bear. The walls are called marmorino veneziano, which is a plaster treatment that mimics limestone.
The kitchen is different from anything Ive ever seen before. 
Japanese inspired staircase. Magnificent. 
The Master bedroom… There is something I love about that bed and the drapery in that window’s alcove. 
The Spa
