In honour of the The Chocolate Festival which will be held on 18 – 19 August at the Anura Vineyards in Stellenbosch. The festival is themed adequately to Willy-Wonka and promises to indulge all your sweet-tooth senses.
Artisian chocolate will be on offer from – Honest artisan chocolate, Hugenot Fine chocolate, Beyers chocolate, CocoaFair and more favorites that are soon to be announced.
Event organiser, Darielle Robertson, said,”A truly sublime experience awaits everyone both young and old and we really will have something for everyone to savour.”
Here are seven facts about Chocolate that you didn’t know
1.In Mayan times the cocoa bean was used as currency as it was considered to be worth more than gold dust. Cultivation of the beans was restricted so the value of cocoa beans would not decrease.
2.The first chocolate bar suitable enough for widespread consumption was produced by the Fry’s chocolate factory in Bristol, England in 1847.
3. Switzerland has the biggest chocolate consumption per capita in the world. Each Swiss person consumes an average of 11 kilograms a year.
4. In celebration of its 100th birthday, chocolate manufacturer Thorntons created the world’s largest chocolate bar. It measured 4 x 4 metres, was 35 centimetres thick and weigheda record breaking 5,792 kilograms.(To put that into perspective, an adult male hippopotamus weighs between 3,000 to 4,500 kg)
5. So many Toblerone bars are sold each year that if they were to be laid end to end, they would stretch for 62,000km, which is over one and half times the circumference of the Earth!
6. The most valuable chocolate bar in the world is one that was over 100-years old and went on Captain Robert Scott’s first Discovery expedition to the Antarctic. The bar, which was 10 centimetres long, wrapped and uneaten, was bought for almost R10,000 by an anonymous buyer in 2001.
7. Most of the world’s cocoa beans come from Africa with 40 percent produced in the Ivory Coast alone.
These 7 facts will have you craving for the sweet stuff, make sure you visit The Chocolate Festival which promises to be a fun-filled family day out.
There will be an array of activities on offer, from tasting, drinking and all things chocolate to chocolate-themed movie screenings, live bands, gin, food stalls and much more.
Tickets cost only R150 per person, with children under 18 admitted free when accompanied by a parent or adult, and can be bought from Webtickets.
Picture: The Chocolate Festival