Swiss Chocolate (part 1)

Well, it has been 9 months since i moved from Zelzate in Belgium to Zürich in Switzerland. People often ask me, if Swiss chocolate is better than Belgian chocolate. They are both good, but different in my own personal opinion... About Belgian "French Fries" - which i still like a lot - i will be talking another time... First of all i must say, that i am really into dark fondant chocolate, i don't really like milk chocolate and don't consider white chocolate a real chocolate . I make it a habit of trying a new Swiss chocolate every weekend and i stumbled on a really good chocolate bar a few weeks back in Coop. It's called "Chocolat Noir à l'absinthe" in French, "Zartbitterschokolade gefüllt mit Absinth" in German or even more exotic "Cioccolato fondente con ripieno d'assenzio" in Italian. It's a black chocolate with the alcoholic drink absinthe as most of you probably already guessed...

Although Absinthe was very popular in the late ate 19th and early 20th century France, particularly among Parisian artists and writers whose romantic associations with the drink still linger in popular culture, it most definitely originated in Val-de-Travers, Switzerland as an elixir/tincture. It has allegedly inspired artists and writers such as Pablo Picasso, Edgar Allen Poe and Ernest Hemingway. Vincent Van Gogh is said to have cut off his ear after drinking it. Absinthe is made by steeping wormwood, along with other herbs, in pure alcohol. The resultant green liquid contains an intoxicating compound called thujone - a substance often and perhaps misleadingly likened to the drug cannabis. It was banned in Switzerland in 1908, after a factory worker killed his wife and two children in a frenzy, which was thought to have been brought on by the drink..

Absinthe has been legal in much of Western Europe for more than 20 years, but the high-proof form of the drink has remained outlawed for domestic use in Switzerland until 2003. The drink has gained massive popularity during the ban and is still gaining popularity now. Even Marilyn Manson (which has lost his touch after his guitarist left him...tainted love oh my god…or was it maybe an overdosis of his own Mansinthe ?) and HR Giger (Swiss creator of original “Alien” creature and lot more or less sensual and frightening beings)…By the way, I will be talking about HR Giger later, once I visited his museum in Gruyères, which is also famous for it's cheese.