How does 66,000 pounds of chocolate sound to you?
Sounds like heaven to me—and now, heaven is right here on earth, in the Italian city of Turin. Cioccola-t, the annual Great Chocolate Festival, is set for March 6 to 15. The event will offer a 10-day extravaganza of tastings, parings, entertainment and seminars, all about chocolate and its cultural meaning.
The festival will feature more than 60,000 pounds of this amazing confection in all its forms: dark, milk, Nutella (my personal breakfast favorite), pralines and truffles … you name it, you can eat it.
God, I’m drooling just writing about this. Listen to this—buildings surrounding Turin’s historic Piazza Vittorio Veneto will be transformed into “grand temples devoted to chocolate.”
Or how about this—a bake-off contest between world-renowned chocolatiers will give visitors the chance to taste thousands of artisanal recipes. Plus, a “Chocolate Dinner” will be prepared entirely by superstar female chefs from the Piedmont region, and there is even a film about chocolate’s portrayal in cinema as a symbol of guilt and seduction.
Guilt and seduction. Yup, that sums it up. That’s exactly how I felt after I ate an entire candy jar filled with chocolate hearts on Valentine’s Day.
Oh yes, I did.
There’s more, but I can’t bear to talk about it anymore, so go visit www.cioccola-to.com. Additional information on Turin, Piedmont and how to purchase a ChocoPass is available at www.torinopiemonte.com.
