BayWing

My brother came over from Davis today and the family went into Berkeley to visith the Scharffen Berger chocolate factory. Naturally Wesley took photos. The tour started in a lecture room with a map, photos and samples.

Cocoa fruit

————-
cocoa grinder (was a coffee grinder) and a mixer


————
Tour guide, Dad & Mom in gift shop (Sam & Marguerite Blackwood)

Cacao trees grow only in the tropics — almost exclusively within 10 degrees latitude of the Equator and only in places that are not too mountainous and do not have monsoons or droughts. Cacao is cultivated underneath Banana or Casaca (Tapioca) or other large leaf, tree-like, grasses. The fruit grows directly on the trunk and major branches. The Cocao beans are really the seeds within the fruit – does this make chocolate a fruit!? For more chocolate facts go to www.scharffenberger.com. Our tour naturally ended in the gift shop where our tour guide Melissa Garden had more samples for us to try.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at 10:31 pm by Wesley R. Elsberry and is filed under SF Bay Area. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.