Switzerland is the land of chocolate. They're very proud of their chocolate heritage in fact the company that started out as Nestlé has been the chocolate business for almost 200 years. The oldest of the Nestlé companies Cailler (Cai yeah) is based out of the local town Vevey, about 20 minutes from Lausanne.They have a very educational tour of the history of chocolate, which came from Central and South America and was taken my Cortez back to the old World. It was interesting to learn its evolution as a Erotic drink, to eventually a drink for the common man. Early in its evolution, there was even a time cocoa beans were negotiable currency.
The Factory, or at least one of the manufacturing lines was running. We got to see actual candies being made. For us older members of society and TV, does everyone remember the I Love Lucy episode where she and Ethyl we working on a candy assembly line and they couldn't keep up with the amount being made.
Well, they now use a robot to do the pick up and place on box. And I swear, it either missed some candies or couldn't keep up. There is a box of missed/rejects/damaged that are under the assembly line belt. This is the robot arm which picks up the candy.
And we all got to taste the candies we saw made.
This is what I brought home. I was being very careful.
The rest of the factory tour pictures can be found here Nestle Chocolate Tour
Hope you got a stash for the rest of your trip!
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