

		"The superior quality of our products is the result of over a century and a half of tradition combined with advanced technology and the careful choice of our ingredients."
	Sailing in the waters off the Yucatan peninsula in the Caribbean Sea, Christopher Columbus landed at the island of Guanaja in 1502. A crowd of dugout canoes filled with Indians approached the caravel of the daring explorer from Genoa.Arriving at the flagship, the smiling Indios offered flowers and unfamiliar fruit. Their brimming hands presented Columbus with heaps of a small brown bean: "Xocoàtl, Xocoàtl!” they repeated with a gleam in their eyes.

							Europe was about to discover Xocoàtl, now known as cocoa, the food of the Aztecs. However, nobody in Spain considered these hard, odourless woody seeds to be important. On the contrary, they seemed to be excessively bitter and somewhat sour. Many decades would have to pass before monarchs and nobles began to consume cocoa in the form of a hot beverage that was so bitter it had to be sweetened and so harsh it had to be tamed with cinnamon and other spices. The beverage was a kind of "batter" that nobody in modern times could manage to swallow. It was nothing like the delicate, refined, hot chocolate we know today. Cocoa is an equatorial plant that is 6 to 8 metres tall. It can be grown only in countries located between 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the equator; that is, in the warmest, most humid areas on Earth.