#WEP AUGUST POST - CHOCOLATE IN #RENAISSANCE TIMES

chocolate in RENAISSANCE times – an elite treat

 

Why I’m posting on this blog -

As this is my pen-name, Silver Tree’s blog, I will post about my vampire series and the era I dropped him in. It worked for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and the idea of CHOCOLAT(E) in Renaissance times intrigued me beyond measure so I joined the August challenge.

DUKE VIPUNIN DI CASTELLINA – my vampire hero is from a hill town in Tuscany where I’ve visited and checked locations, and Florence, where I did the same, drooling over the Medici (who feature strongly in my series)  landmarks throughout the city. What you read about Castellina in my series is authentic, the castle and tunnels and town are still standing today. 

Castello di Castellina

And Florence just gets better over time.

WHY RENAISSANCE TIMES? – author’s choice. My favorite period in history, heralding the move into modern times, but with so much color!

So let’s get into this chocolate biz -

In Tuscany, the birthplace of my Renaissance vampire, Duke Vipunin di Castellina, the history of chocolate begins with the adventurous Florentine merchants around the 15^th century. These merchants built empires, every bit as sophisticated as any modern businessman and ever ready to sell their soul for money. Hmmm. As my hero Vipunin quips when in conference with his ‘brother-in-all-but-blood’ the prince, ruler of Florence, Cosimo de Medici, “it is refreshing when a Florentine merchant is interested in something other than money.”

During the Renaissance, (beginning circa 14^th century), eating well was a real art. In this period “banquet” etiquette was born where the prince showed all his wealth to his subjects, but rarely shared it with the peasants. Food and drink were signs of status, with the upper classes enjoying banquets the peasants could only dream about as they clutched their hunks of bread and drank the ale that sustained their short lives. Which is why humanist Vipunin, pre-vampire, always threw a big party on his castle grounds to honor his laborers at the end of the grape harvest. He served copious food and drink to the peasants, much to the disgust of his half-brother, Abelli the betrayer, who tells Vipunin in no uncertain terms how things will be different when he gets rid of his young brother.

Onto the scene of “fine dining for the elites” came this exotic food imported from South America everyone was talking about. 

Chocolate arrived in Europe during the 1500s, likely brought by both Spanish friars and conquistadors who had traveled to the Americas. Chocolate played an important political, spiritual and economic role in ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, who ground roasted cacao beans into a paste that they mixed with water, vanilla, chili peppers and other spices to brew a frothy chocolate drink.

Originally consumed as a bitter drink, it was prized as both an aphrodisiac and an energy booster. The Spanish sweetened the bitter drink with cane sugar and cinnamon, but one thing remained unchanged: chocolate reigned as a delectable symbol of luxury, wealth and power—an expensive import sipped by royal lips, and affordable only to elites.

In Florence, with the particular jasmine-scented chocolate, produced by the Medici, there is a progressive move away from complicated tastes of the Spanish to bring out tastes such as rose, orange and lemon essences, ancient flavors to be appreciated today.

Chocolate’s popularity eventually spread to other European courts, where aristocrats consumed it as a magic elixir with health benefits. To slake their growing thirst for chocolate, European powers established colonial plantations in equatorial regions around the world to grow cacao and sugar, thus that ugly word ‘slavery’ entered the chocolate business and unfortunately continues today. (Buy Fairtrade chocolate).

At the end of the Renaissance, this exotic cocoa called "food of the Gods" was successfully experimented with in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Duke Vipunin’s home, and its consumption became one of the many elements of the status symbol typical of the time.

It wasn’t until centuries later that the invention of the cocoa press by Dutch inventors, the van Houtens, that chocolate became cheaper and more readily available to the masses. The cocoa press ushered in the modern era of chocolate by enabling it to be used as a confectionery ingredient, and the resulting drop in production costs made chocolate much more affordable.

The cocoa press squeezed the fatty butter from roasted cacao beans, leaving behind a dry cake that could be pulverized into a fine powder and mixed with liquids and other ingredients, poured into molds and solidified into edible, easily digestible chocolate we so love today.

But of course, my vampire Vipunin couldn't enjoy the delights of chocolate once he became a vampire. Once a connoisseur of wine and fine food, he is reduced to a hateful "blood sucker".

TAGLINE: A world without chocolate would be a sad world indeed; thank God for the adventurous ones who brought chocolate home from distant lands!

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