Chocolat Favarger - Boutique Marché

About this audio guide

This guide to Chocolat Favarger in Geneva traces the trade back to 1826, when confectioner Jacques Foulquier began grinding cacao by hand in his own kitchen, and to his son-in-law, a watchmaker named Jean-Samuel Favarger, who brought a horologist's obsession with timing into the craft. It follows the workshop from Geneva's island in the Rhone, where the river itself turned the conching wheels, out to an old mill in Versoix by the 1870s chasing the same hydraulic power. Workers there ground, mixed and hand-shaped the chocolate for generations, tasting each batch by feel.