INTRODUCTION TO THE CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY

HOW CHOCOLATE IS MADE Introduction Industry Harvesting Preparing Making Chocolate Chocolates

NEXT PAGE

From its origin in South America to the tables of Europe and America, chocolate has a long history. As European countries colonized different areas of the world, they established cacao plantations to ensure a constant supply of chococlate. Cacao trees only grow in tropical climates and they require a labor-intensive process to harvest. Consequently, plantation owners turned to the slave trade as a means of supplying cheap labor. As the popularity of chocolate soared, new production processes developed. These innovations helped turn chocolate into an inexpensive luxury people of all social classes could enjoy. Today cacao is still grown in many of the same regions as generations ago, and it is consumed by people throughout the world.

ORIGINS The ancient Maya are believed to be the first people to make chocolate, over 2,000 years ago. Cacao trees, native to Central and South America, provided the beans used to make a bitter, spicy chocolate drink. In the fourteenth century the Aztecs dominated Central Mexico and they developed a sophisticated trade network of cacao until the Spanish conquered the region in 1521. Conquistador Hernn Corts is often credited with introducing cacao to Spain in 1528, but no one truly knows when and how cacao traveled to Europe. CACAO TRADE Spain could not keep chocolate a secret for very long, and the rest of Europe quickly fell in love with the drink. By the seventeenth century, as Britain, France, and the Netherlands colonized countries around the world, they established cacao plantations in tropical locations such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Venezuela, and the West Indies, respectively. These equatorial areas were critical to developing cacao production because cacao trees thrive in tropical regions, which provide continual moisture and a temperate climate. Once a trade network was established to keep Europe well-supplied in chocolate, European land-owners in the Caribbean looked to Africa for their workforce. For over two hundred years cacao plantations relied on enslaved Africans for labor. Cacao was one of many products in the triangular trade network between Europe, West Africa, and the Caribbean. CHOCOLATE CONSUMPTION Originally chocolate was exclusively consumed as a drink. Because Europeans did not like the bitter taste, they added sugar and cinnamon. Gradually chocolate was mixed with milk instead of water to produce a much

lighter and smoother drink, and in 1657 the first known chocolate house opened in London. Like taverns, and later coffee houses, chocolate houses were comfortable places for socializing. Until the mid-eighteenth century chocolate was an expensive drink, a luxury reserved for the wealthy. The main reason for the high cost was that cacao was ground by hand. The use of powered machinery began, not in Europe, but in the American colonies, after New England began trading cacao from the West Indies in the 1750s. The earliest known machine-powered chocolate producers were Obadiah Brown of Providence, Rhode Island, in 1752 and John Hannon of Milton, Massachusetts, in 1765. Water-powered mills were able to mass-produce chocolate at a much faster pace and in greater quantities. This early industrialization dramatically reduced the cost of the final product and chocolate became affordable to the general public. The world continues to consume great quantities of chocolate. Statistics calculated in 2002 average the worlds yearly chocolate intake at approximately 1.2 pounds per person. The average European consumes just over four pounds per year. The Americas come in second at 2.6 pounds per person, with Africa at a third of a pound, then Asia and the Pacific islands at just under a quarter pound per year. TODAY'S CACAO PRODUCING REGIONS Today cacao is grown in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Indonesia, with Nigeria and Brazil rounding out the top five countries. Many of the cacao regions established centuries ago still grow the beans today, along with dozens of new regions located along the equator.The Netherlands, the United States, Ivory Coast, Brazil, and Germany are the top five importers of cacao beans.