Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory Picture Tour

Unfortunately, the mélangeur was being repaired on my visit, so I wasn’t able to get a photograph. However, here you can see the cocoa nibs as they look after being roasted and winnowed. After winnowing, they are transferred to the mélangeur, where they are ground to a thick, rich paste called chocolate liquor (a misleading term, since the product contains no alcohol). This liquor is the foundation for all chocolate products, and at last begins to resemble and smell like conventional chocolate. Remarkably, the mélangeur that Scharffen Berger uses is almost 100 years old, and on the tour they discussed the peculiar difficulties of maintaining such an ancient piece of equipment and keeping it performing up to today’s manufacturing standards.