Capital of Chocolate,
Ice Hockey Town and Federal City
of Switzerland

Switzerland is known as the land of chocolate. But did you also know that the Swiss federal city has one of the longest and most comprehensive histories when it comes to chocolate?

Tobler and its jagged chocolate with the world-renowned name, Toblerone, Lindt with its melting chocolate, Wander with Ovaltine, Bloch and the Ragusa chocolate bar, as well as Suchard, who learned the chocolate trade in today’s federal city, or Kaiser, who founded the chocolate factory in Villars. They are all important names in this historical chronicle.

There are even clues that not only lead to Hershey and its Chocolate Town in the USA, but also to Kohler on the beautiful Lake Geneva.

Amor or Gysi are examples of chocolate manufacturers who withdrew from the dense chocolate market of the federal city and unfortunately no longer exist today.

The numerous different chocolate pioneers in the Swiss federal city made the diversity of this chocolate story unique in the world.

Thanks to the fact that the Mill of Schermen was already processing cocoa in 1750, this unique history also includes the origin of Swiss chocolate. The history of the mill itself even goes back to the 14th century (Bubenberg-Lehen: müli zem Tal …. blöwen).

Who invented it? Bern can be described as the birthplace of contemporary chocolate, thanks to the inventive spirit of Rodolphe Lindt and his secret born in the Matte district.

Before that, chocolate had a fragmented or heterogeneous structure in which individual sugar crystals were clearly visible. As a result, the consistency was either gritty or viscous, similar to fudge. Original chocolate tasted more like the original cocoa bean. As a result the aromas from it were significantly more bitter than they are today. These original forms of chocolate had practically no melting properties.

It was only through the refining process by Lindt that chocolate got the properties that we recognize today, for example a uniform structure, fruity or flowery aromas and even its form of melting.

Lindt’s refining process for producing melting chocolate is known as conching. As his invention of the conching machine could not been patented, he had to keep his achievement secret for many years.

Using the example of heating the chocolate again after conching, it should be made clear how complex the chemical-technical problem had been, that Lindt could solve with his conching technique: When tempering and molding the chocolate, the chocolatier must first heat it up to 50°, then cool it down to 27° and heat it up again to 33° so that it has the same consistency when it cools down as it did after conching.

It is claimed that the melting chocolate was the result of an accident: One Friday, Lindt left the factory without shutting down his conching machine. The machine kept conching over the weekend, and when Lindt went to work again on Monday, it is said that he found a completely new type of chocolate...

For the melting properties of the chocolate, cocoa butter must be added to the cocoa mass during conching. During this so-called lucky weekend somebody else would have had to add the needed butter. The claim is therefore not only illogical from a technical point of view, but also distracts from the complexity of the solution, which was developed in the legendary Matte District. However, it is undisputed that Lindt's innovative spirit revolutionized the chocolate world and at the same time continues to make the hearts of chocolate lovers beat faster to this day.