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At ENO, we celebrate the history of chocolate everyday by combining it with two other gourmet pleasures - wine and
cheese. We showcase an ever-changing list of hand-crafted truffles and chocolate bars produced by local chocolatiers.
And we serve these tasty delights as single servings or in flights (sets of three chocolates). Check back soon for our
list of partner chocolatiers.
Tapping Into A 4,000-Year Legacy Of Sweetness
Few gourmet treats stir the passions like chocolate. Rich, creamy, and decadent, this sweet confection seems
to tap into our deepest and most powerful emotions - pleasure, joy, sadness, and delight. And though we associate
chocolate with contemporary giants such as Nestle, Hershey, Ghiradelli, and Lindt, its origins stretch back 4,000
years to South and Central America.
In 600 A.D., the Mayas migrated from Central America to South America, where they established the earliest known
cocoa plantations in Yucatan. Over the following centuries, the Aztecs also discovered the wonder of chocolate - made
from cocoa beans - and named it Xocolatl, which the Conquistadors later changed to "chocolat". Both the Mayans and
Aztecs ground cocoa beans and mixed them with water to create a variety of beverages - both sweet and bitter - which
were reserved exclusively for nobility and clerics.
Cocoa beans were so valuable they served as a form of money. They were also prized for their holistic characteristics.
Believed to fight fatigue, the beans were associated with both the Mayans' and Aztecs' fertility gods. In fact,
Montezuma - who reputedly drank chocolate from a golden goblet 50 times a day - was quoted as saying: "The divine
drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole
day without food."
The Spanish conquistadors first came into contact with the Aztecs in the early 1500s and brought their cocoa beans
back to Spain. Hernando Cortez seeded plantations on Trinidad, Haiti, and the West African island of Bioko to
grow "money" to trade with the Aztecs for gold. Spaniards also blended roasted cocoa beans with sugar and vanilla
to make them sweeter. Not long afterwards, the first chocolate factories opened in Spain, grounding cocoa beans
into a fine powder.
Within a few years, the chocolate powder was introduced to the rest of Europe - the Spanish Netherlands, Italy,
France, Germany, and England -- on a wide scale and exploded in popularity. The first chocolate house in England
opened in London in 1657, followed quickly by many others. Rivaling the already established coffeehouses, these
sweet retreats served as clubs where the wealthy and influential gathered to smoke tobacco, conduct business, and
socialize.
Chocolate returned to the Americas in the 1700s when English colonists carried the confection, as well as coffee,
to settlements in North America (a delicious bit of irony since these colonies eventually became the United States
and Canada, the world's largest chocolate consumers). Prominent Quaker families - Cadbury being the only one still
in existence today - became internationally known chocolate makers.
The 1800s saw several key events that would lay the foundation for the multibillion-dollar chocolate industry we
know today. In 1828 a Dutch chemist named Conrad Van Houten pressed cocoa butter out of chocolate liquor,
creating the powder used in hot cocoa; in 1848 Fry & Sons of Bristol, England, produced the first chocolate bar;
and in 1875 manufacturers Daniel Peter and Henri Nestle combined chocolate and milk powder to create the first milk
chocolate bar.
Being an enophile is more than appreciating great wine - it's a lifestyle. At ENO, we celebrate good taste with a
world-class array of international wines, cheese, and chocolates. Attracting both novices and aficionados, ENO
is a casual, educational, and most important, fun tasting experience.
Escape the standard wine bar concept by making your reservations with us today.
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