8 SWITZERLAND – LAND OF CHOCOLATE

How Swiss chocolate conquered the world Mention Switzerland abroad, and the person you‘re talking to may start dreaming of mouth-watering chocolate. As the symbol of a globally unique tradition, our country is inevitably associated with chocolate. We took a look at the unparalleled development of Swiss chocolatiers. By Alain Wey.

Chocolate: manna from heaven that and groundbreaking innovations, they who used it in their creations. In the 18th found ideal conditions on the banks of honed the manufacture of chocolate to Century, Italy became a centre of confec- Swiss rivers and lakes in which to unfold perfection. Today chocolate “made in tionary and chocolate-making, drawing its unique qualities. If there is one thing Switzerland” dominates foreign markets, practitioners from around Europe. Many that represents Switzerland in the eyes of and export volumes have risen sharply chocolatiers from the Ticino (Val Blenio) the world, it must be chocolate. Was it since 2003. We tell the memorable story and the Grisons who had learnt their fate or coincidence that the abbreviation of Swiss chocolatiers. trade in Turin, Milan and Venice left for Switzerland (CH) and the word The first cocoa bean was brought to home to work abroad in the 19th Century, “ chocolate” start with the same two let- Europe from South America in the 16th founding strongly family-oriented man- ters? Such mystical connections will prob- Century, but it took several hundred ufacturing businesses in Amsterdam, ably remain concealed forever. Yet at first years before the first chocolate bar was Stockholm, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Stras- there was nothing to suggest that Swiss produced. The delicacy first conquered burg, Nice, Paris, London, St. Petersburg, chocolatiers were destined to tread a spe- Europe’s royal households in the form of Copenhagen and elsewhere. Their know- cial path. Thanks to the matchless qual- a drink mixed with honey and herbs. It how flowed back to Switzerland’s choco- ity of their products, inventive curiosity was then discovered by confectioners, late pioneers, who gradually began open- ing the first factories and eventually turned Switzerland into the Number One chocolate nation by the early 20th Cen- tury. One of these pioneers was François-Louis Cailler (1796- s er 1852) from Vevey. He learnt his actur craft in Turin. Upon his return to Switzerland, he opened a mechanised chocolate factory in o. 6 nion of Swiss Chocolate Manuf h December 2006 / N hocosuisse.c .c WISS REVIEW Photo: Chocosuisse – U www S

The cocoa from which Swiss chocolate is made comes from South America and Africa. 9

Corsier-sur-Vevey in 1819. Although com- to Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Thun. He chocolate, which he dubbed “Gala Peter”. mercial success was a long time in coming, was also interested in shipping along the The result was so successful that the en- the young Cailler created the basis for in- River Rhine, traded in silk and macaroni, tire industry switched to this production dustrial-scale production (the rotary and was even involved in iron-ore mining method from 1880 onwards. Daniel Peter grater for cocoa beans) and offered six- in the US. A look at the industry in 1883 therefore played a pivotal role in helping teen different sorts of chocolate with a va- shows that Suchard accounted for 50 per- Swiss chocolate reach the supremacy it riety of additional ingredients, including cent of the chocolate produced in Swit- enjoys today. Although chemist and phar- cinnamon and vanilla. Jacques Foulquier zerland. macist Henri Nestlé (1814-1890) did not (1799-1865) began manually producing In 1831, Charles Amédée Kohler (1790- produce chocolate himself, his company chocolate in Geneva in 1826. His son-in- 1874), a wholesale grocer who also sold was responsible for the global marketing law and successor, Jean-Samuel Favarger, cocoa, decided it made more sense to of Peter’s milk chocolate from 1904. gave the brand that is still famous today open his own chocolate factory than to The first chocolate factory in German- its name. Demand grew, and by 1832 the continue supplying confectioners with speaking Switzerland opened in 1845. In- canton of Vaud alone boasted some 32 the raw material. Just like Cailler and Su- spired by the experiments of Cailler and manual chocolate-making businesses. The chard, he constantly sought to refine the Suchard, Rudolf Sprüngli-Amman (1816- first steamships began operating, bring- existing range of chocolates. His most im- 1897) developed a manufacturing process ing yet more consumers. Tourism flour- portant creation was nut chocolate. The that enabled him to refine chocolate. Aq- ished. During the reign of Queen Victo- family-run firm trained several famous uilino Maestrani (1814-1880) was the most ria, the horror stories that Lord Byron, apprentices, including Rudolf Lindt (in important figure in chocolate-making in the poet Shelley and his wife Mary (the 1872-1875) and Robert Frey (1880-1883). eastern Switzerland. Like his father, a author of “Frankenstein”) wrote on Lake Daniel Peter (1836-1919), a son-in-law chocolatier from Lugano, Maestrani spent Geneva in 1816 attracted the first English of F.-L. Cailler and a close friend of Henri time in Lombardy (Milan) and later Nu- tourists. Nestlé, founded the Peter-Cailler com- remberg learning the fine art of chocolate Having trained as a confectioner under pany in 1867. In 1875, he succeeded in mix- manufacturing. In 1850, he opened a fac- his brother in Berne, Philippe Suchard ing cocoa paste with condensed milk, tory in Lucerne, which he then moved to (1797-1884) from Boudry in the canton of thereby creating the world’s first milk St. Gallen in 1859. Neuchâtel travelled 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 pio- neering spirit that drove Philippe Suchard was not con- fined solely to chocolate. It was he who introduced steamships

Even today‘s industrial production follows the same traditional stages employed by craftsmen. 10 SWITZERLAND – LAND OF CHOCOLATE

Rudolf Lindt (1855-1909) opened a Export fi gures fell during the Depres- SOME STATISTICS: chocolate factory in Berne in 1879. A born sion years of the 1920s and 1930s, and it tinkerer, Lindt constantly improved his was only after the end of the Second World ■ In 2005, sales by the 18 Swiss chocolate mixing and grating machines until he had War that the Swiss chocolate industry re- manufacturers rose by 8.2% to 160,000 developed a method for producing a soft- covered and took off again. In the 1950s, tonnes. Revenues rose by 7.5% over the melting chocolate, which he called “choc- sales were still at around 26,000 tonnes, previous year to CHF 1.466 billion.* olat surfin”. It was the first chocolate that compared with 160,000 tonnes today. In- ■ 57% of total Swiss production was ex- melted in the mouth, and signalled the ternational competition forced the Swiss ported in 2005.* birth of modern chocolate. Also in Berne, chocolate industry to streamline its pro- ■ The 18 companies that make up the Swiss Jean Tobler (1830-1905) ran a confection- duction while at the same time sticking to chocolate industry have a combined work- ery shop in which he sold his own special- and further improving the tried-and- force of 4400.* ities alongside chocolate made by produc- tested recipes on which Swiss chocolate ■ Only 1% of the worldwide cocoa bean har- ers like Lindt. In 1899, he founded the had built its excellent reputation. vest ends up in Switzerland.* Tobler chocolate factory. We have his son Given the recent uproar over the change ■ Switzerland has 333 confectionery/ Theodor to thank for inventing Toblerone, in packaging for Cailler and Frigor choc- cake shops. the most famous of all Swiss chocolates, olates and the subsequent slump in sales, (Source: Swiss Association of Pastry Chefs and Confec- in 1908. Nestlé eventually had to concede that tioners; SKCV: *ChocoSuisse, the Union of Swiss Choco- late Manufacturers The years 1890-1920 were the heyday chocolate consumers are a conservative of Switzerland’s chocolate industry, as it lot. Nestlé has now announced that Cailler earned a reputation far beyond our coun- chocolates will be sold in their conven- try’s borders. Tourism was booming, and tional packaging again from January 2007. But the story of Swiss chocolate doesn’t members of the international high society, Tradition remains a key sales factor in the end there. If, one day in the future, a space who spent their holidays in Switzerland, 21st Century. Innovation and new crea- explorer light years from Earth offers became the world’s ambassadors for Swiss tions are, of course, welcome, but restraint an extraterrestrial chocolate, what are chocolate. Rudolf Lindt, for ex ample, is advisable. After all, why change a win- the odds that it will be real Swiss choco- aimed his advertising at exclusive girls’ ning formula? late? finishing schools in western Switzerland, where Europe’s crème de la crème gath- ered. 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 em- ployed by the industry jumped from 528 to 5547. Whereas about 13 tonnes of choc- olate were produced in 1905, this had al- ready risen to 40,000 tonnes (three-quar- ters of which was exported) by 1918. Switzerland thus became something of a chocolate superpower, and by 1912 it had cornered 55 percent of the world’s choc- olate export market. o. 6 December 2006 / N es: Chocosuisse WISS REVIEW

S Imag The result is chocolate that melts in the mouth like no other.